The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, the BSO performs most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at Tanglewood.
John Towner Williams is an American composer and conductor. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. He has a distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 92 years old.
Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-American violinist. He has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a state dinner for Elizabeth II at the White House in 2007, and at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.
The Boston Pops is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in light classical and popular music. The orchestra's current music director is Keith Lockhart.
Arthur Fiedler was an American conductor known for his association with both the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the United States. Fiedler was sometimes criticized for over-popularizing music, particularly when adapting popular songs or editing portions of the classical repertoire, but he kept performances informal and sometimes self-mocking to attract a bigger audience.
Antonio Sánchez is a Mexican drummer and composer. He is best known for his work with jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and as a composer of the film score for the 2014 film Birdman. The score earned him a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and BAFTA Award for Best Film Music; he won a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Score, and the Satellite Award for Best Original Score.
Seiji Ozawa was a Japanese conductor known internationally for his work as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), where he served from 1973 for 29 years. After conducting the Vienna New Year's Concert in 2002, he was director of the Vienna State Opera until 2010. In Japan, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in 1984, their festival in 1992, and the Tokyo Opera Nomori in 2005.
The Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal and bluegrass.
Brad Ellis is an American composer, musical director, singer, orchestrator, and jazz pianist. Ellis is perhaps most visible as Brad the mostly quiet pianist for the high school kids on Glee, the Fox television show for which he is part of creator Ryan Murphy's musical production team.
Jean-Yves Thibaudet is a French pianist.
Stefano Bollani is an Italian composer, pianist and singer, also active as a writer and a television presenter.
Kirill Gerstein is a Russian-American concert pianist. He is the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gerstein is an American citizen based in Berlin. Between 2007-2017, he led piano classes at the Stuttgart Musik Hochschule. In 2018, he took up the post of Professor of Piano at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin in addition to the Kronberg Academy’s Sir András Schiff Performance Programme for Young Artists.
Michael Clement Irving Gibbs is a Rhodesian-born English jazz composer, conductor, arranger and producer as well as a trombonist and keyboardist.
Rob Mathes is an American record producer, music arranger, composer, songwriter, and performer. He also writes bluesy spiritual-pop music.
Peter Boyer is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator, and professor of music. He is known primarily for his orchestral works, which have received over 600 performances, by more than 250 orchestras.
Julius Penson Williams, is an American composer, conductor, and college professor. He is currently president of the Conductors Guild. An author of both instrumental and vocal music, Julius Williams has composed operas, symphonies, and chorus works for stage, concert hall, film, and television. Primarily a classically trained musician, Williams also writes in genres including gospel, jazz, and other contemporary forms.
Keith Alan Lockhart is an American conductor. He is the Conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra, the Chief Guest Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Artistic Director of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina.
Don Breithaupt is a Canadian pianist, singer/songwriter, composer, arranger, producer and author.
Bill Elliott is an American pianist, bandleader, Hollywood composer and Broadway orchestrator. In 2015, he won a Tony Award for best orchestration for the Broadway musical, An American in Paris. In 2012 he was nominated for both Tony and Grammy awards for Broadway's Nice Work if You Can Get It. Elliott won Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations in 2017 for the Broadway Musical Bandstand.
Berklee Online, founded in 2001, is the private, nonprofit online school of Berklee College of Music in Boston that offers music courses, certificates, bachelor's, and master's degree programs to students worldwide. Berklee Online is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE). Since its inception, Berklee Online has taught more than 75,000 students from 164 countries. It is the largest online music school in the world with more than 18,000 annual enrollments in credit-based courses and more than 3.1 million enrollments in massive open online courses through Coursera, EdX, and Kadenze. As of 2021, Berklee Online has nearly 250 courses and instructors.
