The Seattle Symphony is an American orchestra based in Seattle, Washington. Since 1998, the orchestra is resident at Benaroya Hall. The orchestra also serves as the accompanying orchestra for the Seattle Opera.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
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.
Charles Édouard Dutoit is a Swiss conductor. He is the principal guest conductor for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia.
Kirill Petrovich Kondrashin was a Soviet and Russian conductor. People's Artist of the USSR (1972).
The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra is an orchestra based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The orchestra gives the majority of its performances in the Jack Singer Concert Hall at Arts Commons. It is also the resident orchestra for the Calgary Opera, Alberta Ballet Company, and the Honens International Piano Competition.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore SO has its principal residence at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where it performs more than 130 concerts a year. In 2005, it began regular performances at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Australian orchestra based in Melbourne. The MSO is resident at Hamer Hall. The MSO has its own choir, the MSO Chorus, following integration with the Melbourne Chorale in 2008.
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is an American orchestra based in the city of Rochester, New York. Its primary concert venue is the Eastman Theatre at the Eastman School of Music.
Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
Denis Leonidovich Matsuev is a Russian pianist. Primarily a classical pianist, he also performs jazz occasionally.
JoAnn Falletta is an American conductor.
The Omaha Symphony is a professional orchestra performing more than 200 concerts and presentations annually in Omaha, Nebraska and throughout the orchestra's home region. The orchestra was established in 1921. It is considered a major American orchestra, classified under "Group 2" among the League of American Orchestras, which ranks symphony orchestras by annual budget, with Group 1 the largest and Group 8 the smallest. Its annual budget in 2022 was approximately $8.4 million. The orchestra's home and principal venue is the 2,005-seat Holland Performing Arts Center, the $100 million purpose-built facility designed by Polshek Partnership that opened in October 2005. In a review, The Dallas Morning News called the Holland "one of the country's best-sounding" symphony halls.
The Manila Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is one of the oldest orchestras in Asia. Founded by Alexander Lippay in 1926, the orchestra has played a major role in Philippine history, including acting as a symbol of resistance during the Second World War. Through the years, MSO has hosted artists Montserrat Caballé, Yehudi Menuhin, Igor Oistrakh, Eugene Istomin, Fou Ts'ong, Barry Tuckwell, Paul Badura-Skoda and Rony Rogoff, as well as conductors Andre Kostelanetz, Arthur Fiedler, Mendi Rodan, Robert Feist, Gareth Nair, Helen Quach, and Eduard Strauss II. Today, the Manila Symphony Orchestra provides a showcase for young Filipino musical talent.
Jayson Lloyd Gillham is an Australian-British classical pianist, based in London. In 2014, Gillham was the winner of the 2014 Montreal International Musical Competition, which brought him to international attention. His performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 was described in the Huffington Post as being played 'with such streamlined patrician elegance that he took home First Prize and a string of engagements...' The British conductor Sir Mark Elder said Gillham 'plays Beethoven with a sort of 'glow''. In May 2015, Gillham signed a three-album deal with ABC Classics.
Kenneth Kiesler is an American symphony orchestra and opera conductor and mentor to conductors. Kiesler is conductor laureate of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra where he was music director from 1980 to 2000 and founder and director of the Conductors Retreat at Medomak. In 2014, Kiesler was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Darius Milhaud's opera L'Orestie d'Eschyle. He is director of orchestras and professor of conducting at the University of Michigan.
Symphony Number One (SNO) is a chamber orchestra primarily devoted to new music based in Baltimore, Maryland. SNO performs each year in musical venues in Mount Vernon, Baltimore, at Morgan State University, and across the city. Jordan Randall Smith is Symphony Number One's founder and current music director.
Jordan Randall Smith is an American conductor, arts entrepreneur, and percussionist. He is the music director of Symphony Number One and conductor of the Hopkins Concert Orchestra at Johns Hopkins University. He was also a Visiting assistant professor of Music and Director of Orchestra at Susquehanna University.
Chineke! Orchestra is a British orchestra, the first professional orchestra in Europe to be made up of majority Black & ethnically diverse musicians. The word Chineke derives from the Igbo language meaning "God". The orchestra was founded by musician Chi-chi Nwanoku CBE and their debut concert was in 2015 at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
Roberto Minczuk is a Brazilian conductor, maestro of the São Paulo Municipal Symphony Orchestra, music director of the New Mexico Philarmonic laureate of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, artistic director of the Campos do Jordão Winter Festival, and conductor emeritus of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra.
