Maestro Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and an internationally-recognized expert on leadership development, will be the 62nd presentation in the Saint Vincent College Threshold Series at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 15 in the Fred M. Rogers Center. His talk, entitled "Music Makes Great Neighbors,” is being presented by the Ann Kinzer Clark, M.D. Memorial Lecture Series, Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media and the Saint Vincent College Threshold Series in cooperation with the Latrobe Area Hospital Charitable Foundation.

He will be welcomed on stage by Saint Vincent College President Jim Towey. Maxwell King, co-director of the Rogers center will make remarks, and Andrew Clark, son of the late Dr. Ann Clark, will introduce Maestro Zander.

Maestro Zander’s presentation at Saint Vincent will take the audience on an experiential journey that offers a startling new perspective through stories, music and concepts especially as it relates to the way in which Fred Rogers used music to communicate and improve the quality of life. He will perform on the Steinway Concert Grand Piano that originally belonged to Fred Rogers and on which he composed many of the songs that were performed on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The piano was donated to the Fred Rogers Center last year by Fred Rogers’s widow, Joanne Rogers.

After the program, the audience will be invited to enjoy coffee and desserts in the lobby with entertainment by Mr. Chris Fiano, a senior music major at Saint Vincent College.

Admission is free of charge for Maestro Zander’s presentation at Saint Vincent College. However, all seats in the Fred M. Rogers Center are reserved and admission will be by ticket only. Requests for reservations may be made by phone to 724 805-2177.

Please note that tickets will be held at the Box Office at the Rogers Center for pickup when attendees arrive for the presentation; no tickets are mailed in advance. Tickets not claimed by 6:50 p.m. will be released.

The program is made possible by support from the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation, Latrobe Area Hospital Charitable Foundation, McFeely-Rogers Foundation, Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College, Saint Vincent College Cultural Endowment Fund, the Threshold Lecture Series and the Conference Center at Saint Vincent College.

Maestro Zander started his early musical training under the guidance of his father, in his native England, with lessons in cello and composition. When he was nine, Benjamin Britten, England's leading composer, took an interest in his compositions and invited the family to spend three summers in Aldeburgh in Suffolk where he lived. This led to a long association with Britten and lessons in theory and composition from Britten's close associate Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst.

He left school when he was fifteen, to study in Florence with the great Spanish cello virtuoso, Gaspar Cassadó, who was his teacher and mentor for the next five years. He completed his cello training at the State Academy in Cologne, travelling extensively with Cassadó and performing recitals and chamber music.

In 1964 Maestro Zander completed a degree at London University, winning the University College Essay Prize, and a Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship for post-graduate work at Harvard. Boston has been his home ever since.

In 1967 Maestro Zander joined the Faculty of the New England Conservatory, where he teaches the Interpretation Class, conducts the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra and regularly conducts the Conservatory's orchestras. Twenty-three years ago he became the Artistic Director of the joint program between NEC and Walnut Hill, a boarding school for the Performing Arts. During his thirty-five year tenure as conductor of the New England Conservatory Youth Philharmonic he has taken the orchestra on 13 international tours, made five commercial recordings and several television documentaries for PBS.

In 1979, he became the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. In their twenty-eight seasons together they have performed an extensive repertoire, with an emphasis on late Romantic and early Twentieth Century composers, including a traversal of the complete cycle of symphonies of Gustav Mahler. To celebrate the orchestra's 25th Anniversary in 2003-2004, the BPO completed an all-Mahler season, including a concert of Mahler's Second Symphony in Carnegie Hall. The BPO has recorded five extremely successful CDs, all of which are listed in the Penguin Guide of the Best recordings of the Past 20 years. Their recording of The Rite of Spring was named as one of the ten most important Musical Events of 1992 by the New York Times.

Maestro Zander has established an international reputation as a guest conductor. He has conducted the Israel Philharmonic for three consecutive years, and conducted orchestras as diverse as the Bournemouth Symphony, the Scottish and Irish National Orchestras, the St Petersburg Philharmonic, the Malaysian Symphony, the St Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and appeared with the National Youth Orchestra of New Zealand, and the Australian Youth Orchestra.

He has a unique relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra of London with whom he is recording a series of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies for the Telarc label. Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, and Mahler's symphonies 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 have been released thus far. The phenomenal success of these discs is in part due to the eloquent and informative discussion discs which accompany each disc. High Fidelity named his recording of Mahler 6th as the best classical recording of 2002. His recording of Mahler's 9th Symphony was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Maestro Zander has an extensive speaking career, traveling the world lecturing to organizations on leadership. He has just returned from Davos, Switzerland where he was the final keynote speaker at the World Economic Forum, where he has appeared four times as a keynote speaker and where he was presented with the Crystal award for "outstanding contributions in the Arts and international relations". The best-selling book, The Art of Possibility, co-authored with his partner, leading psychotherapist Rosamund Zander, has been translated into sixteen languages.

Maestro Zander was awarded the 2002 "Caring Citizen of the Humanities" Award by the International Council for Caring Communities at the United Nations.

Saint Vincent College established the Threshold Lecture Series in September 1981 when the Kennametal Foundation of Latrobe made a substantial grant to the College for the creation of an ongoing series of lectures and cultural events. The intention of the College is to offer the Threshold Series as a valuable resource not only for the academic community but also for the people of the area.

Previous Threshold speakers have included Carl Sagan, the Time magazine panel consisting of Hugh Sidey, Strobe Talbott and John Stacks, Amitai Etzioni, Alvin Toffler, Dixy Lee Ray, Donald Johanson, Isaac Asimov, Claire Bloom, Lawrence Stone and Rembert G. Weakland, O.S.B., Alex Haley, Robert Claiborne, Arthur B. Laffer, Richard E. Morley and William A. Taylor, May Sarton, Mark Littman, Jehan Sadat, Tom Wolfe, Michael Kammen, Martin E. Marty, Lt. General James A. Abrahamson, Seymour M. Hersh, Stephen F. Cohen, Joyce Carol Oates, Estelle R. Ramey, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B., Ralph Nader, Daniel Callahan, Robert Jarvik, John E. Chubb, John Noble Wilford, Ronald A. Morse, Thomas Sowell, Michael Medved, Jane Bryant Quinn, Harold S. Kushner, James Q. Wilson, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., James Burke, Bernard S. Siegal, Peter B. Dervan, Milton Katselas, Bill Moyers, Peter Stearns, Dean Ornish, Mary Pipher, Robert Munsch, Herbert S. Benson, Michael Turner, Susan Stamberg, Mike Jensen, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, Roger Cossack, Stanley Hauerwas, Regina Carter, Heinz-Joachim Fischer, Jonathan Kozol, Gilbert Meilaender, John Haught, Richard Louv, Steven Strogatz, Robert Putnam and Jerome Oetgen.

For further information, contact the Public Relations Office at Saint Vincent College, 724 805-2010, pr@stvincent.edu.

Photo: Maestro Benjamin Zander

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