Sunday, March 9, 2025
3:00 PM EST

Toby Oft is the 12th principal trombone in the history of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Occupying the J.P. and Mary B. Barger Chair, he was appointed in 2008 by then-music director James Levine. Currently in his ninth season with the BSO, he has performed both as a soloist with the orchestra and as a chamber musician with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. Oft previously held principal trombone positions with the San Diego Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sarasota Orchestra. International career highlights as a concerto soloist have included acclaimed performances of such works as Launy Grøndahl’s Concerto for Trombone and Ferdinand David’s Concertino for Trombone with a diverse variety of ensembles on several continents. Domestic solo performances range from Gunther Schuller’s virtuosic Eine Kleine Posaunenmusik with “Pershing’s Own” U.S. Army Band in Washington, D.C., to Leopold Mozart’s rarely-performed Serenade in D for Trumpet, Alto Trombone, and Orchestra with the Boston Classical Orchestra. Deeply committed to education, Oft has presented master classes and recitals around the world. Here at home, he is on the faculty at New England Conservatory and Boston University. During the summer, he coaches at Tanglewood Music Center and is a frequent guest teacher and performer at Boston University Tanglewood Institute. In addition to prominent military band and teaching positions, Oft’s students have won tenured positions in top orchestras in Detroit, Jacksonville, Toronto, and Puerto Rico, and have also been accepted to such distinguished festivals as the Verbier Festival and Tanglewood Music Center. As an Edwards Instruments performing artist, Oft helped design the new T350-HB tenor trombone model and has his own exclusive line of tenor and alto trombone mouthpieces with Griego Mouthpieces. In spring 2014, Oft released his debut album, “First Look.” To pay tribute to the legacy of the great Joannes Rochut — a former principal trombone of the BSO — Oft is currently recording all the Rochut Etudes in HD video for YouTube students worldwide.

Japanese-American conductor Ken Yanagisawa is the Music Director of the Boston Opera Collaborative and the Boston Annex Players, the Associate Conductor of the Boston Civic Symphony, the Assistant Conductor of the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music. He made his Japanese debut conducting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Kansai Nikikai and the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra in February 2023 and will return in Fall 2026 to conduct Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito. A 2024 Aspen Conducting Academy Fellow and James Conlon Conductor Prize recipient, Ken has previously served as a Conducting Apprentice with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and has assisted/covered the National Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Berlin Academy of American Music, and Berlin Opernfest, among others.

Ken recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University under the guidance of James Burton and also holds graduate degrees in conducting from the Manhattan School of Music and a B.A. in music from Yale University. Prior to Yale he attended the New England Conservatory as an Undergraduate Diploma candidate for Oboe Performance under the tutelage of John Ferrillo. His other teachers include George Manahan, William Lumpkin, Bernard Labadie, and Tatsuya Shimono. In masterclasses and festivals, he has been taught by renowned artists and pedagogues such as Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, Mark Stringer, Dame Jane Glover, Gerard Schwarz, and Jorma Panula. He is deeply grateful for all the excellent guidance and mentorship he has received thus far in his life as a musician.