Kevin Burdette is an American bass who has worked as a soloist with the Teatro alla Scala, Metropolitan Opera, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, Teatro Colón, Dallas Opera, San Diego Opera, Washington National Opera, New York City Opera, Opéra de Montréal, Boston Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and the Spoleto Festival USA, as well as many regional opera companies including Florentine Opera, Opéra de Québec, Portland Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Atlanta Opera, Virginia Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Memphis, Gotham Chamber Opera, Knoxville Opera, Opera Grand Rapids, Toledo Opera, and the Lyric Opera of San Antonio. In 2015, he created the roles of Beck Weathers in Joby Talbot's Everest, Blindman and Stobrod Thewes in Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain, Eric Gold and the Ghost of Bazzetti in Jake Heggie's Great Scott, and Ob in Mark Adamo's Becoming Santa Claus.
Tania León is a Cuban-born American composer of both large scale and chamber works. She is also renowned as a conductor, educator, and advisor to arts organizations.
Rosemary Thomson is a Canadian conductor and chorus master. As of 2018, she is the Music Director of the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra, chorus master of the Calgary Philharmonic, and Assistant Conductor for the Canadian Opera Company.
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The orchestra performs primarily at the Bradley Symphony Center in Allen-Bradley Hall. The orchestra also serves as the orchestra for Florentine Opera productions.
The Marcus Performing Arts Center is a performing arts center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Managed by a non-profit organization, it is marketed as Milwaukee's premier presenter of the performing arts. It is located at 929 North Water Street, at the intersection of State Street in downtown Milwaukee, and is a dedicated War Memorial.
Margaret Eleanor Hillis was an American conductor. She was the founder and first director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
Sean Bradley is an American conductor, composer, violinist, music theorist, educator, and impresario. Bradley is conductor of the Bradley String Orchestra, and president of Concert Talent—a production company which provides corporate entertainment, engagement marketing, talent management and logistical support for major label recording and touring artists. In recent years, his activities as an entrepreneur have increasingly included funding and leading a variety of music-related projects on the World Wide Web. He is the founder of Bravoflix, the first online subscription video service in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to the performing arts, as well as a technology consultancy providing custom web application development and cloud computing. As a musician, he performs regularly on stages in the U.S., China, and Mexico.
Joseph Rescigno is an American conductor best known for his work in opera in North America and Europe. He served as Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor of the Florentine Opera Company of Milwaukee, WI for 38 seasons beginning in 1981. He also served as Artistic Director of l'Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, in Quebec, Canada, for four seasons. His commitment to young musicians and singers returns him each year to La Musica Lirica, a summer program for singers in Northern Italy, where he has been Music Director since 2005., He has mentored Solti Foundation U.S. Award recipients as part of the Foundation's residency project since the 2014–2015 season, first at the Florentine and later elsewhere. In this program, award recipients apprentice through an entire rehearsal and performance cycle.
The Grand Rapids Symphony is a professional orchestra located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1930, the Symphony celebrated its 90th anniversary season in 2019-20. In 2006, its recording Invention and Alchemy was nominated for Best Classical Crossover Album at the Grammy Awards. The Grands Rapids Symphony presents more than 400 performances throughout Michigan each year, reaching over 200,000 people, and is heard in West Michigan on broadcasts by WBLU-FM (88.9) and WBLV-FM (90.3). The organization also implements 18 educational and access programs that benefit over 80,000 Michigan residents.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, CC is a Canadian (Québécois) conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was also principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2018.
Mason Wesley Bates is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant's film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer.
Kevin R. McMahon is an American, orchestra/opera conductor, composer/orchestrator/arranger, clinician/adjudicator, and violinist.
Elmer Gantry is a 2007 American opera by Robert Aldridge to a libretto by Herschel Garfein based on the 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis of the same name. The Nashville Opera presented the world première in November 2007.
Robert Livingstone Aldridge is an American composer, professor, and current Head of Composition professor, and former Director of Music at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. He has written over eighty works for orchestra, opera, musical theater, dance, and various chamber ensembles that have been performed in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is widely known for his opera Elmer Gantry, based on Sinclair Lewis's 1927 novel of the same name. which was completed in 2007 and won Best Engineered Album (Classical) and Best Contemporary Classical Composition in the 54th Annual Grammy Awards.
Herschel Garfein is an American composer, librettist, stage director, and faculty member of the Steinhardt School of Music at New York University, where he teaches Script Analysis. Garfein is widely known for his libretto written for Robert Aldridge's Elmer Gantry, which won two 2012 Grammy Awards including "Best Contemporary Classical Composition" won by Garfein and Aldridge. He also collaborated with Aldridge on the oratorio Parables. In his compositions for the musical Suenos he found an inspiration in Hispanic rhythms. Garfein also composed the music and libretto for an opera based on the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.
The 54th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 12, 2012, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles being broadcast on CBS honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011. LL Cool J hosted the show. It was the first time in seven years that the event had an official host. Nominations were announced on November 30, 2011, on prime-time television as part of "The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live! – Countdown to Music's Biggest Night", a one-hour special broadcast live on CBS from Nokia Theatre at L.A. Live. Kanye West received the most nominations with seven. Adele, Foo Fighters, and Bruno Mars each received six nominations. Lil Wayne, Skrillex, and Radiohead all earned five nominations. The nominations were criticised by many music journalists as Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy missed out on a nomination for Album of the Year despite being highly critically acclaimed and topping many end of year charts. West's album went on to win Best Rap Album.
The 55th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 10, 2013, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles honoring the best in music for the recording year beginning October 1, 2011 through September 30, 2012. The show was broadcast on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/PT and was hosted for the second time by LL Cool J. The "Pre-Telecast Ceremony" was streamed live from LA's Nokia Theater at the official Grammy website. Nominations were announced on December 5, 2012, on prime-time television as part of "The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live! – Countdown to Music's Biggest Night", a one-hour special co-hosted by LL Cool J & Taylor Swift and broadcast live on CBS from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. Fun, Frank Ocean, Mumford & Sons, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Dan Auerbach received the most nominations with six each.
Kostis Protopapas is a Greek-born American symphony and opera conductor, currently serving as the Artistic Director of Opera Santa Barbara. From 2008 until 2016 he was the Artistic Director of Tulsa Opera in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had previously served as Associate Conductor and Chorusmaster. During his 15-year tenure with the company, Protopapas conducted 30 productions of a diverse repertoire extending from popular classics like La Boheme, Carmen and Pagliacci to contemporary American works like Elmer Gantry, Of Mice and Men and A Streetcar Named Desire. About his 2011 Barber of Seville performances, Alex Ross of The New Yorker wrote "Most impressive was the fluid idiomatic playing of the orchestra… In any city, it's rare to find a conductor that sets the right tempo so consistently that you stop noticing he's there." In 2014 his contract was renewed through 2017, however he resigned his post in March 2016
A. Duain Wolfe is an American choral conductor, conductor of the Colorado Symphony Chorus and the Colorado Children's Chorale. He is the former chorus director and conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus (1994-2022) and a past president of Chorus America.
Black conductors are musicians of African, Caribbean, African-American ancestry and other members of the African diaspora who are musical ensemble leaders who direct classical music performances, such as an orchestral or choral concerts, or jazz ensemble big band concerts by way of visible gestures with the hands, arms, face and head. Conductors of African descent are rare, as the vast majority are male and Caucasian.
