Claudio Abbado was an Italian conductor who was one of the leading conductors of his generation. He served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, founder and director of Lucerne Festival Orchestra, founder and director of Mahler Chamber Orchestra, founding Artistic Director of Orchestra Mozart and music director of European Union Youth Orchestra.
Symphony Hall is a concert hall located at 301 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, opened in 1900. Designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, it was built for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which continues to make the hall its home. It can accommodate an audience of 2,625. The hall was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1999 and is a pending Boston Landmark. It was then noted that "Symphony Hall remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world, and is considered the finest in the United States." Symphony Hall, located one block from Berklee College of Music to the north and one block from the New England Conservatory to the south, also serves as home to the Boston Pops Orchestra as well as the site of many concerts of the Handel and Haydn Society.
Gunther Alexander Schuller was an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, educator, publisher, and jazz musician.
The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. The conservatory is located on Huntington Avenue along the Avenue of the Arts near Boston Symphony Hall, and is home to approximately 750 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate studies, and 1,500 more in its Preparatory School and School of Continuing Education. NEC offers bachelor's degrees in instrumental and vocal classical music performance, contemporary musical arts, composition, jazz studies, music history, and music theory, as well as graduate degrees in collaborative piano, conducting, and musicology. The conservatory has also partnered with Harvard University and Tufts University to create joint double-degree, five-year programs.
Longy School of Music of Bard College is a private music school in Cambridge, Massachusetts associated with Bard College. Founded in 1915 as the Longy School of Music, it was one of the four independent degree-granting music schools in the Boston region along with the New England Conservatory, Berklee College of Music, and Boston Conservatory. In 2012, the institution merged with Bard College to become Longy School of Music of Bard College. As of the 2018–19 academic year, the conservatory has 300 students in its degree programs from 35 states and 23 countries.
Yuri Abramovich Bashmet is a Russian conductor, violinist, and violist.
The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras (BYSO) is a youth orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts under the artistic leadership of music director, Federico Cortese. Since 1958, BYSO has served thousands of young musicians from throughout New England with three full symphonic orchestras, two young string training orchestras, six chamber orchestras, a preparatory wind ensemble, a chamber music program and a nationally recognized instrument training program for underrepresented youth from inner-city communities called the Intensive Community Program (ICP). The 2017-2018 season marks the celebration of BYSO's 60th Anniversary. Each year, BYSO auditions approximately 850 students from throughout New England, ages 5–18, and accepts nearly 500 young musicians.
Douglas Yeo is an American bass trombonist who played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2012, where he held the John Moors Cabot Bass Trombone Chair. He was also on the faculty of the New England Conservatory. In 2012 he retired from the BSO and accepted a position as professor of trombone at the Arizona State University School of Music, a position he held until 2016. In 2019, he was appointed to the faculty of Wheaton College (Illinois).
Edwin Barker is an American double bass player who graduated from the New England Conservatory. He is Principal Double Bass with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Associate Professor of Music at Boston University College of Fine Arts.
Charles Ansbacher was an American conductor. After undergraduate and graduate work at Brown University ('65) and the University of Cincinnati, he studied conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Ansbacher was the conductor and musical director of the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1989, and, in 2000, founded the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, which gives free classical music concerts at various locations in the Boston area. On September 1, 2010, he was named Conductor Laureate of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra.
New England String Ensemble was founded in 1993 by violinist Peter Stickel and cellist John Bumstead to champion strings in performance and education and is one of the country's leading professional string orchestras. The ensemble consists of 26 professional string musicians who perform four concert programs a year at both the Rogers Center for the Arts in North Andover, Massachusetts and New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston, Massachusetts. It is led by conductor and music director, Federico Cortese, and performs music from the 17th century to the present.
Marcus Thompson is a violist and viola d'amore player known for his work as a recitalist, orchestral soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and educator. Thompson is a founding member and is currently artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society, and is Institute Professor at MIT and a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Symphony and Horticultural Halls are historic buildings at the corner of Massachusetts and Huntington Avenues in the Fenway–Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The halls were listed as a pair on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Symphony Hall was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1999.
Stefano Miceli is an Italian classical conductor and pianist.
Gil Rose is the founder and conductor of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), founder and General-Artistic Director of Odyssey Opera, Artistic Director of Monadnock Music Festival, Professor of Practice at Northeastern University, and Executive Producer of the record label "BMOP/sound."
The New England Ragtime Ensemble was a Boston chamber orchestra dedicated to the music of Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers.
Malcolm Cameron Peyton is an American composer, concert director, conductor, and teacher.
Marco Rogliano is an Italian violinist.
Burr Van Nostrand is an American classical composer and cellist. He is known for his avant-garde works which use aleatory and graphic notation and were composed from the 1960s through the 1980s. Van Nostrand was born in Los Angeles and began composing while still in high school in San Diego. He studied cello at Yale with Aldo Parisot and composition at the New England Conservatory under Robert Cogan. After his graduation from the NEC with a Masters in Music in 1971, he spent four years in the Netherlands at the Gaudeamus Foundation where several of his works were premiered. He stopped composing in the late 1980s but remained active as a cellist until 2000. There was renewed interest in his music following a concert of his early works at the New England Conservatory in 2012 and the release of a CD the following year containing his 1969 Voyage in a White Building I and two other works from that period.
Kristo Kondakçi is an Albanian-American conductor who is currently the music director of the Kendall Square Orchestra, the Eureka Ensemble, and the Narragansett Bay Symphony Community Orchestra. He is also the cofounder of the Women's Chorus, a choral program for women experiencing homelessness in Boston.
