Pianist Orli Shaham's Bach Yard airs on WQXR-FM, Saturday mornings, Nov. 30-Dec. 21. Ms. Shaham hosts From the Top in a live radio taping in Portland, Maine. CD of Mozart concertos with St. Louis Symphony receives accolades worldwide

Orli Shaham’s interactive concert series for kids, Baby Got Bach has a new name - Orli Shaham's Bach Yard – and an expanded program. Bach Yard combines live ensemble performances with storytelling, costumed musicians, and a host of activities in which children can take part. The interactive concerts introduce musical concepts, instruments and the experience of concert-going to children age pre-Kindergarten to early elementary.

Coupling two such theatrical concertos as these, and ones that sport theme and variations in their finales, makes good sense. It also marks the first commercial recording in 16 years for the St Louis Symphony under David Robertson, then nearing the end of his 13-year stint as music director. Who better to accompany, then, than his wife, Orli Shaham playing on a New York Steinway.

Julia Figueras sat down in the WXXI studios to talk about the pieces, programming, and the power of music for the youngest listeners in Orli's Bach Yard.

"[An] outstanding disc of Mozart piano concertos from Canary Classics...Orli Shaham's affection is never in doubt in K453, making you fall in love all over again with this most radiant of concertos..."

"Orli Shaham revels in the theatrical richness and breathtaking invention of Mozart’s piano concertos..."

"...superbly recorded, well-judged balance between the piano and the ensemble ... Orli Shaham (sister of Gil) and David Robertson are at-one interpretatively (they are, as a secondary fact, married) and the SLS members are stylish and sympathetic confreres."

"Pianist Orli Shaham….delivers two ravishing, full-blooded Mozart concerti in a recording that I have come to love."

The ultimate test of performances for most listeners is not whether they are historically accurate but whether they are convincing – and these certainly are.

On Sunday, October 6 at 10 am, pianist Orli Shaham hosts Bach Yard - an interactive concert for children - in Rochester, NY. Click here for free tickets

"Shaham and Robertson, with help from a flawless orchestral performance, created the sense of a musical event — if not a masterpiece, at least a brave work by an emerging musical genius."

"...pianist Orli Shaham played with authority and élan. "

"Pianist Orli Shaham’s experiences, even from a very early age, have informed who she is as a pianist."

[Shaham] was terrific, and from memory, so inside the music, whether musing, scampering or jazzing, the latter being ‘The Masque’.

On Sunday, Feb. 24, pianist and host of Pacific Symphony’s Café Ludwig, Orli Shaham performs the world premiere of David Robertson’s “A Goldberg Conjecture.” This new version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations re-imagines this famous solo harpsichord work for piano and string quartet.

Orli Shaham speaks with WUWM ahead of her performances with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

"Shaham gave a commanding, powerful performance of the Bartok concerto, playing with a big, warm sound that was full of sometimes-bold and sometimes-subtle shifts in timbre and color."

Orli Shaham is one of the soloists, along with Marc-Andre Hamelin, for John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music this weekend at the LA Phil. Adams himself conducts and the program also includes a big world premiere of the Symphony No. 12 by Philip Glass.

"As this new, superb live recording, with Orli Shaham and Marc-André Hamelin as the two swashbuckling pianists shows, "Grand Pianola Music" ... Thirty years on, it’s still enormous fun, tongue in cheek but serious, too."

"A treasurable album, which alternately soothes and tickles the ears."

...the lasting impress is of authentic affection and love.