The Los Angeles Philharmonic is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. Colloquially referred to as the LA Phil, the orchestra has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from July through September. Gustavo Dudamel is the current music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen is conductor laureate, Zubin Mehta is conductor emeritus, and Susanna Mälkki is principal guest conductor. John Adams is the orchestra's current composer-in-residence.
The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is a classical music chamber orchestra based in New York City. They have won several Grammy Awards, and are known for their collaborative leadership style in which the musicians, not a conductor, interpret the score.
Marin Alsop is an American conductor, the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Ravinia Festival, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2020.
Bramwell Tovey was a British conductor and composer.
Josef Alois Krips was an Austrian conductor and violinist.
Manfred Honeck is an Austrian conductor. He is currently the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Elisabeth Batiashvili, professionally known as Lisa Batiashvili, is a prominent Georgian violinist active across Europe and the United States. A former New York Philharmonic artist-in-residence, she is acclaimed for her "natural elegance, silky sound and the meticulous grace of her articulation". Batiashvili makes frequent appearances at high-profile international events; she was the violin soloist at the 2018 Nobel Prize concert.
Gustavo Adolfo Dudamel Ramírez is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist. He is currently the music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is scheduled to become the Music and Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
Douglas Boyd is a British oboist and conductor.
Matthias Bamert is a Swiss conductor and composer.
Danzón No. 2 is an orchestral composition by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. Along with Carlos Chávez's Sinfonia India and Silvestre Revueltas' Sensemaya, Danzón No. 2 is one of the most popular and most frequently performed orchestral Mexican contemporary classical music compositions. Danzón No. 2 gained great popularity worldwide when the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela under Gustavo Dudamel included it on their programme for their 2007 European and American tour.
Anne Akiko Meyers is an American violinist. She has been called “the Wonder Woman of commissioning” by The Strad.
The Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition is one of the most important music competitions of its kind worldwide and is held in Bamberg, Germany. Conductors no older than 35 years may enter.
Blair Alston Mercer Tindall was an American oboist, performer, producer, speaker, and journalist. After spending years as a classical musician, she wrote the 2005 memoir Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, which was later adapted into a television series.
El Sistema is a publicly financed, voluntary sector, music-education program, founded in Venezuela in 1975 by Venezuelan educator, musician, and activist José Antonio Abreu. It later adopted the motto "Music for Social Change." El Sistema-inspired programs provide what the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies describes as "free classical music education that promotes human opportunity and development for impoverished children." El Sistema has inspired similar programmes in more than 60 other countries. By 2015, according to official figures, El Sistema included more than 400 music centers and 700,000 young musicians. The original program in Venezuela involves four after-school hours of musical training and rehearsal each week, plus additional work on the weekends.
David Hattner is an American professional clarinetist and conductor currently serving as music director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. Raised in Toledo, Ohio, Hattner attended the Interlochen Arts Camp and Arts Academy, experiences which inspired him to become a professional musician and conductor. He graduated from the Arts Academy in 1986 and enrolled in Northwestern University where he studied clarinet performance under Robert Marcellus. In 1988 he placed second in the International Clarinet Association's Young Artist Competition and was selected to join the American-Soviet Youth Orchestra. He earned a music degree with honors in 1990.
Daníel Bjarnason is an Icelandic composer and conductor. He has garnered widespread acclaim for his debut album, Processions (2010), with TimeOut NY writing he "create(s) a sound that comes eerily close to defining classical music's undefinable brave new world".
Gemma Elizabeth New is a New Zealand-born conductor. She is currently principal conductor of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
Philippe Tondre is a French-British classical oboist. He has served as Principal Oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2020, and a professor of Oboe at the Curtis Institute of Music since 2022.
Lois Wann was an American oboist who was one of the well-known American oboists of the 20th century. She performed as a soloist in chamber music and concertos, specializing in early music but also playing contemporary works. Several contemporary composers wrote pieces for her, including Darius Milhaud. Reviews of Wann's concerts often highlighted her technique and musicianship. As an orchestral musician, she was an early example both of a woman who played the oboe in a professional American orchestra and of a woman principal in a professional orchestra. She spent much of her career in New York, where she was a noted teacher of the oboe, at the Juilliard School and elsewhere.
