A ballerina who lived in a single motel room with her mother and five siblings during her teenage years will become the American Ballet Theatre's first black soloist in 20 years.
In 1948 a teaching colleague put him forward as the soloist in Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on Christmas Carols, with the composer himself conducting.
He was the soloist on Mozart's Violin Concerto No 4, which combined technical precision and a breezy sweetness to exhilarating effect, with Barenboim playing the hire-wire act with two vertiginous solos.
Your ability to riff on a particular theme with variations, repetition, dynamics and pace reminds me of a modern jazz soloist: Parker, Coltrane, Roger Whittaker.
The artist-in-residence is Anne-Sophie Mutter, an acclaimed violinist who will play in recital and as a concert soloist.
The 19th-century concerto was usually a contest between soloist and orchestra.
The soprano soloist is Claron McFadden, and the players are those masters of contemporary music, the Arditti Quartet and the Nash Ensemble, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.
Wittily packaged to resemble a guitar amplifier, its four discs contain all the recordings Christian made as a revelatory soloist with Benny Goodman, plus alternate takes, rehearsals and spur-of-the-moment jam sessions.
In the midst of the big-band boom, he had scored a huge hit with his classic version of "Body and Soul", proving what a small band and a brilliant soloist could achieve.
"It worked around 50% of the time, but the other times they'd tell me that I had to check it, and I couldn't face it going in the hold, so I started paying for a seat".As a well-paid soloist, Mr Haimowitz is lucky that he can afford such a luxury.
But the orchestra's interactions with the soloist felt laboured, as if it could not match his energy.
