Phillip Gainsley's Podcast

You saw them on ABC News; now meet them on this excting episode.

The Reasonable Doubts is a "garage band" of  Minnesota judges, created to provide creativity and to relieve stress through making music together. The group has nine members, who come together to enjoy music and foster camaraderie outside of their judicial roles.   

The Reasonable Doubts was formed about two years ago by Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Anne McKeig, who sent an email to judges across the state inviting them to join her in starting a band.  As you will hear, the name "Reasonable Doubts" refers to the legal standard of proof required in criminal cases.

The band practices nearly every weekend in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and their repertoire covers genres from country to rock and pop. They perform covers of popular songs, including tracks by Elvis Presley, AC/DC, and Beyoncé.

The Reasonable Doubts has participated in various events, including their first public booking at Law Law Palooza, (Get it?) a benefit concert for legal aid, highlighting their commitment to community engagement while also showcasing their musical talents. 

The Reasonable Doubts band demonstrates how judges can come together to share their love for music, to support each other, and to find balance in their demanding careers. I know from my day job the stress under which judges work --- day and night.  The Reasonable Doubts goes a way to relive that stress.

Enjoy this episode!

The New Yorker magazine called Joyce DiDonato “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation.”  Joyce has towered at the top of the industry as a performer, a producer, and a fierce advocate for the arts. With a repertoire spanning over four centuries, a varied and highly acclaimed discography, and industry-leading projects, her artistry has defined what it is to be a singer in the 21st century.

Joyce enjoys a musical partnership with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra and, of course, the Metropolitan Opera. 

Joyce’s distinctively varied 2025-26 season commenced with season-opening concerts for the Minnesota Orchestra and Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain, as well as the re-opening Powell Hall with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a Kevin Puts’s World Premiere, House of Tomorrow. 

She only recently made her Lincoln Center Theater stage debut as The Mother in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and is about to star in the Met’s production of Innocence by Kaija Saariaho.

Concert appearances include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with Nézet-Séguin and The Philadelphia Orchestra, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 with Nézet-Séguin and the Berlin Philharmoniker. Joyce also joins the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for her second European tour with Yannick and this orchestra following a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 at Carnegie Hall.

She is also, quite plainly, a genuine delight.

Born in Taiwan, raised in Austria, and educated in Europe and America, Pianist Jenny Lin has built a vibrant international career, notable for innovative collaborations with a range of artists and creators. In recent seasons, Jenny has performances – both digital, and in person – for Washington Performing Arts; at Hudson Hall performing the American premiere of William Bolcom’s Suite of Preludes; at Boston Conservatory’s piano series; at Little Island in NYC; and at Winnipeg New Music Festival. 

She now serves as director of music for The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

Recently, she performed a recital of Philip Glass’s music for the Morris Museum – a continuation of a close collaboration with Glass, with whom she has appeared regularly since 2014.  This experience has inspired the creation of her own commissioning initiative, The Etudes Project, in which she works with a range of living composers to create new technical piano etudes, pairing each new piece with an existing etude from the classical canon.  Her catalogue includes more than 50 albums.

A passionate advocate for education, Jenny created “Melody’s Mostly Musical Day“, a musical album and picture book for children, following the adventures of an imaginative little girl from breakfast to bedtime, told in a collection of 26 classical piano works from Mozart to Gershwin.  We’ll hear some of these in this episode.

Fluent in English, German, Mandarin, and French, Jenny Lin studied Noel Flores at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, with Julian Martin at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and with Dominique Weber in Geneva. She has also worked with Leon Fleisher, Richard Goode, and Blanca Uribe, and at Italy’s Fondazione Internazionale per il pianoforte with Dimitri Bashkirov and Andreas Staier. In addition to her musical studies, Lin holds a bachelor’s degree in German Literature from The Johns Hopkins University. Jenny Lin currently resides with her family in New York City and serves on the faculty of Mannes College The New School for Music.

Hamburg’s new General Music Director, Omer Meir Wellber, recently began his five-year tenure of the 2025/26 opera and symphony seasons with the Philharmonic State Orchestra at the striking Elbphilharmonie.

 The season’s unique programs focus on a very special kind of dialogue between the present and the past under the motto “no risk, no fun”. In this episode, Omer will explain that and more.  Suffice it to say,  Omer unveiled his unusual idea of “over-writing” single movements of great works by international composers, to be repeated in all concerts this season.

 Omer regularly conducts the Orchestre National de France, the Gewand-haus-orchester Leipzig, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Deutsche Kammer-philharmonie Bremen and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

 He is also the author of,  “Die Angst, das Risiko und die Liebe  – Momente mit Mozart” – his first book, published in spring 2017.  In it, he shares his personal understanding of the universal emotions addressed in the three Mozart/Da Ponte operas – Così fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, establishing him as a great voice of classical music.

For 65 years Young Concert Artists has stood at the forefront of discovering and launching the careers of the future leaders of classical music. Founded by Susan Wadsworth in 1961, YCA has invested in its artists by providing them with the tools, opportunities, and infrastructure to take their careers to the highest level. YCA alumni include Emanuel Ax, Julia Bullock, Anne AkikoMeyers, Jeremy Denk, Ray Chen, Anne-Marie McDermott, Richard Goode, Zlatomir Fung, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Kevin Puts, Pinchas Zukerman, Randall Goosby and Sasha Cooke, to name but a few.

This episode features composer Daniel Kellogg, an alumnus of Young Concert Artists, and now its president. He is one of the extraordinary musicians whose careers were discovered and launched to prominence by this innovative non-profit organization.

Chosen as YCA Composer-in-Residence in 2002, Daniel was a member of the Young Concert Artists roster for 10 years.

Join us as he reveals plans for the 2025-2026 season.