The Columbia Symphony Orchestra was an orchestra formed by Columbia Records strictly for the purpose of making recordings. In the 1950s, it provided a vehicle for some of Columbia's better known conductors and recording artists to record using only company resources. The musicians in the orchestra were contracted as needed for individual sessions and consisted of free-lance artists and often members of either the New York Philharmonic or the Los Angeles Philharmonic, depending on whether the recording was being made in Columbia's East Coast or West Coast studios.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, officially known in shorthand as LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It 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 Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is a Swedish symphony orchestra based in Gothenburg. The GSO is resident at the Gothenburg Concert Hall at Götaplatsen. The orchestra received the title of the National Orchestra of Sweden in 1997.
Gael García Bernal is a Mexican actor and producer. He is known for his performances in the films Bad Education (2004), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Amores perros (2000), Y tu mamá también (2001), Babel (2006), Coco (2017), and Old (2021), for his role as the titular character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television special Werewolf by Night (2022), and for his role as Rodrigo de Souza in the series Mozart in the Jungle (2014–18).
Bramwell Tovey was a British conductor and composer.
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 music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Paris Opera. He is scheduled to become music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2026.
Douglas Boyd is a British oboist and conductor.
Jonathan Biss is an American pianist, teacher, and writer based in Philadelphia. He is the co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival.
Matthias Bamert is a Swiss composer and conductor.
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 concert violinist. Meyers was the top-selling classical instrumentalist of 2014 on Billboard's traditional classical charts.
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.
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".
Caroline Adelaide Shaw is an American composer of contemporary classical music, violinist, and singer. She is best known for the a cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices, for which she won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Shaw received the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Narrow Sea.
Paul Xavier Desenne Hable was a Venezuelan cellist and composer.
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.
