Beethoven Pastoral Symphony No. 6

Program

Henry Dorn Transitions (10 mins)

Max Bruch Scottish Fantasy (30 mins)

Prelude: Grave & Adagio cantabile
Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Finale: Allegro guerriero

Intermission (20 mins)

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6, Pastoral

Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside
Scene by the brook
Merry gathering of country folk
Thunderstorm
Shepherd’s song
Cheerful and thankful feelings after the storm

Grant Park Orchestra

Grant Park Orchestra

Orchestra

Grant Park Orchestra

Orchestra

The Grant Park Orchestra was formed in 1944 when the Chicago Park District assembled a single resident orchestra under the direction of Principal Conductor Nikolai Malko to perform at the Grant Park Music Festival (which began in 1935 and featured a series of visiting orchestras). Since then, other prestigious conductors have held the position, including Irwin Hoffman, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, Zdnek Macal and Hugh Wolff. In 2000, Carlos Kalmar was named the Festival’s Principal Conductor.
Today, the Grant Park Orchestra draws its musicians from different orchestras and musical institutions throughout the United States. Each summer, all of the orchestra members gather in Millennium Park for a ten-week long season consisting of intensive rehearsals and performances. During the year, the musicians can be found across the country performing with major orchestras, teaching at numerous universities and appearing frequently in concert stages across the country. Some organizations represented by Grant Park Orchestra musicians include the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the Buffalo, Colorado, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Milwaukee, New Mexico, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Richmond, San Antonio, Seattle, and Utah Symphonies. The Grant Park Orchestra was nominated for a Grammy award for its recording entitled Robert Kurka: Symphonic Works.

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Osmo Vänskä

Osmo Vänskä

Conductor

Osmo Vänskä

Conductor

Conductor Laureate of the Minnesota Orchestra, where he held the Music Directorship for 19 years, and Music Director of Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra from 2020 to 2023, Osmo Vänskä is recognised for his compelling interpretations of repertoire of all ages and an energetic presence on the podium. His democratic and inclusive style of work has been key in forging long-standing relationships with many orchestras worldwide.
Performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Minnesota Orchestra in June 2022 provided a fitting culmination for Vänskä’s tenure as Music Director. Together they undertook five major European tours, as well as an historic trip to Cuba in 2015 – the first visit by an American orchestra since the two countries re-established diplomatic relations. They also made a ground-breaking tour to South Africa in 2018 as part of worldwide celebrations of Nelson Mandela’s Centenary – furthermore the first visit by an American orchestra - drawing together South African and American performers in musical expressions of peace, freedom, and reconciliation on a five-city tour. Vanska and Minnesota Orchestra also made an acclaimed return to London’s BBC Proms in Summer 2018.
Osmo Vänskä will conduct Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra on a major European tour in Autumn 2022, including concerts in Vienna, Salzburg, Amsterdam, and London. He will return to guest conduct the Seoul Philharmonic several times in spring 2023.
He returns this season to the Symphony and Philharmonic orchestras of Bamberg, Chicago, Los Angeles, Helsinki, Israel, Houston, Montreal, and Pittsburgh amongst others, while past guest conducting invitations include renowned international ensembles such as Cleveland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras in North America, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin as well as London Philharmonic Orchestra.  He is regularly invited to guest conduct in Asia including with Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and China, Hangzhou, Hong Kong and Taiwan Philharmonic Orchestras.
Vänskä continues to develop a visiting and touring relationship with Curtis Institute of Music Symphony Orchestra, leading conducting seminars as well as tours in Europe, the US and Asia. He has also been invited to guest conduct New World Symphony in Miami, where he additionally coaches its Conducting Fellows.
A distinguished recording artist for the BIS label, Vänskä is currently recording all of Mahler’s symphonies with Minnesota Orchestra. The Fifth Symphony received a Grammy nomination in 2017 for Best Orchestral Performance. Vänskä and Minnesota have also recorded the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Sibelius to critical acclaim, winning a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance in 2014 as well as being nominated on several occasions. In 2021 they were voted Gramophone’s ‘Orchestra of the Year’. 
Vänskä studied conducting at Finland’s Sibelius Academy and was awarded first prize in the 1982 Besançon Competition. He began his career as a clarinetist, occupying the co-principal chair of Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. He regularly performs chamber music, having been invited to La Jolla Summerfest, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, Naantali Summer Festival, Sysmä Summer Sounds and Music in Ruovesi, to name a few. He has recorded Bernhard Henrik Crusell’s three Clarinet Quartets and Kalevi Aho’s Clarinet Quintet for the BIS label and is in the process of recording several duos for clarinet and violin which he has commissioned with his wife, violinist Erin Keefe.
Vänskä is the recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award, the Finlandia Foundation’s Arts and Letters award, the 2010 Ditson Award from Columbia University and the Pro Finlandia medal awarded to him by the State of Finland. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Glasgow and Minnesota and was named Musical America’s 2005 Conductor of the Year. In 2013 he received the Annual Award from the German Record Critics’ Award Association for his involvement in BIS’s recordings of the complete works by Sibelius.
Source: Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

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Paul Huang

Paul Huang

Violin

Paul Huang

Violin

Recipient of the prestigious 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, violinist Paul Huang is considered to be one of the most distinctive artists of his generation. The Washington Post remarked that Mr. Huang "possesses a big, luscious tone, spot-on intonation and a technique that makes the most punishing string phrases feel as natural as breathing," and further proclaimed him as "an artist with the goods for a significant career" following his recital debut at the Kennedy Center.
Known for his "unfailing attractive, golden, and resonant tone" (The Strad), Mr. Huang's recent highlights have included acclaim debut at Bravo!Vail Music Festival stepping in for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 with Chamber Orchestra Vienna-Berlin, Rotterdam Philharmonic with Lahav Shani, Detroit Symphony with Leonard Slatkin, Houston Symphony with Andres Orozco-Estrada, NHK and Dallas Symphonies with Fabio Luisi, Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, Baltimore Symphony and Seoul Philharmonic with Markus Stenz, San Francisco Symphony with Mei-Ann Chen, and recital debuts at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and Aspen Music Festival. In Fall 2021, Paul also became the first classical violinist to perform his own arrangement of the National Anthem for the opening game of the NFL at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina to an audience of 75,000. An exclusive recording artist with France's Naïve Records, his debut album “Kaleidoscope" was released worldwide in October of 2023 and a second album is scheduled for release in January, 2025. His recording of Toshio Hosokawa's Violin Concerto "Genesis" with Residentie Orkest Den Haag was released on NAXOS in June of 2024.
During the 2024-25 season, Mr. Huang returns to the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan, Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Hiroshima Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Tucson Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and Knoxville Symphony, and makes his London debut at the Barbican Hall with BBC Symphony and Marie Jacquot as well as with Oregon, Indianapolis, and Toledo Symphonies.
2024-25 season recital, chamber music, and festival performances will include Mr. Huang’s return to both the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Camerata Pacifica, and his much anticipated recital at Minnesota Beethoven Festival. Mr. Huang will also return to Bravo!Vail, North Shore, Music@Menlo, Bridgehampton, and Santa Fe Music Festivals. In January 2025, Mr. Huang will launch the 3rd edition of "Paul Huang & Friends" International Chamber Music Festival in Taipei, Taiwan, in association with the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.
Mr. Huang's recent recital engagements included Lincoln Center's "Great Performers" series and debuts at the Wigmore Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and the Louvre in Paris.
A frequent guest artist at music festivals worldwide, he has performed at the Seattle, Music@Menlo, Savannah, Caramoor, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Moritzburg, Kissinger Sommer, Sion, Orford Musique, and the PyeongChang Music Festival in South Korea. His chamber music collaborators have included Gil Shaham, Cho-Liang Lin, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Jian Wang, Lynn Harrell, Yefim Bronfman, Kirill Gerstein and Marc-Andre Hamelin.
Winner of the 2011 Young Concert Artists International Auditions, Mr. Huang made critically acclaimed recital debuts in New York at Lincoln Center and in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center. Other honors include First Prize at the 2009 Tibor Varga International Violin Competition Sion-Valais in Switzerland, the 2009 Chi-Mei Cultural Foundation Arts Award for Taiwan’s Most Promising Young Artists, the 2013 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and the 2014 Classical Recording Foundation Young Artist Award.
Born in Taiwan, Mr. Huang began violin lessons at the age of seven. He is a recipient of the inaugural Kovner Fellowship at The Juilliard School, where he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees under Hyo Kang and I-Hao Lee. He plays on the legendary 1742 “ex-Wieniawski” Guarneri del Gesù on extended loan through the Stradivari Society of Chicago and is on the faculty of Taipei National University of the Arts. He resides in New York.

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Henry Dorn (b. 1988)
Transitions (2019)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings
Performance time: 10 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Countless composers have used their music to honor loved ones who have passed. Take Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem, for example, inspired by the death of his mother. Like Brahms, Henry Dorn channeled his grief over losing his mother to lung cancer in Transitions. Unusually, however, Dorn directly confronts the cruelty of the disease that claimed his mother. “I try to capture not the beauty we often try to find in the passing of a loved one, but the tumultuous, ravenous nature of this illness,” he writes in his program note. Dorn spent a month in the hospital with his mother as she lay dying in 2017. “It was there that I started to the write notes and ideas I felt about the experience, her journey, her unspoken strength, and her quiet inner beauty,” he said. Dorn revisited these sketches after taking some time to process his thoughts, completing the work in 2019. Transitions was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä on May 6, 2022.

Dorn charts the progression of the disease through Transitions, beginning with a menacing fugal subject that quickly spreads throughout the orchestra. He captures the soundscape of the hospital, from the rising sound of the ventilator to the clanking of computer keyboards and rolling of hospital equipment. A quote of the “Dies Irae” chant hints at impending death. Amid this turmoil comes a moment of reprieve in the stillness of the night after everyone is gone. “I tried to imagine my mother’s thoughts and envisioned this state of serenity led by a melody I could see her humming. This was her unspoken strength, still present in the face of death,” he writes. After this moment of calm, the chaos of cancer returns with renewed vigor. In a nod to the instrument his mother played in school, the horns raise their bells for a steadfast melody, projecting her inner strength in the face of suffering.

Max Bruch (1838–1920)
Scottish Fantasy for Violin & Orchestra, op. 46 (1880)
Scored for: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings, and solo violin
Performance time: 30 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 19, 1978; David Zinman, conductor and Isidor Lateiner, violin

According to Max Bruch, the violin “can sing a melody better than a piano, and melody is the soul of music.” Given his affinity for the instrument, it is no surprise that Bruch’s works for solo violin and orchestra have endured where most of his other compositions have not. Overshadowed during and after his life by his more original contemporary, Johannes Brahms, Bruch is largely remembered for two pieces: his Violin Concerto No. 1 and the Scottish Fantasy.

Although Bruch had never been to Scotland when he wrote the Scottish Fantasy in 1879, he was drawn to images of the country’s rugged landscapes and its rich folk music tradition. For authentic Scottish folk melodies, Bruch turned to The Scots Musical Museum, a collection of 600 folk songs compiled by James Johnson between 1787 and 1803 with the help of none other than Robert Burns.

The first movement opens with a somber trombone chorale, setting the stage for the solo violin’s brooding lament, evoking the image of an ancient castle arising from the mist. The clouds eventually disperse with a warm rendition of the folk song “Auld Robb Morris,” accompanied by the harp. The scherzo’s main theme is based on a vigorous dance tune called “The Dusty Miller.” Here, the soloist imitates a Scottish fiddler, while the low strings provide the drone of the bagpipes. After a false ending, the violas recall “Auld Robb Morris,” drawing the violin soloist back into their reverie. Proceeding without pause, the third movement is a set of variations on the lovelorn song “I’m a’doon for lack O’Johnnie.”

The finale, marked Allegro guerriero, is a warlike dance based on “Hey Tuttie Tatie.” Robert Burns used this tune for his patriotic poem “Scots, wha hae,” which imagines Robert the Bruce’s speech to his outnumbered army before the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. According to traditional lore, his army played “Hey Tuttie Tatie” on the battlefield, which is why Burns chose the song. The triumphant battle cry contrasts with a more lyrical second theme, culminating in a wistful reflection on “Auld Robb Morris” before the exuberant finish.

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68, Pastoral (1808)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two French horns, two trumpets, two trombones, timpani, and strings
Performance time: 39 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 19, 1937; Walter H. Steindel, conductor

Like many composers, Ludwig van Beethoven loved a good country walk to get the creative juices flowing. In the summers he would take up residence in the small towns on the outskirts of Vienna, using solitary walks to work through his compositions in his head. The peace he felt in nature was the inspiration for his “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6. Although written at the same time as his intensely driven Fifth Symphony (and premiered in the same concert in 1808), the more laid-back Pastoral Symphony provides a rare glimpse of Beethoven’s lighter side. Unlike Beethoven’s “heroic” symphonies, which go from struggle to triumph, the Pastoral Symphony comes full circle, returning to the state of normalcy in which it began.

The Pastoral Symphony is also unique among Beethoven’s oeuvre in that he gives a descriptive title for each movement. Although Beethoven cautioned that the symphony was “more an expression of feeling than of painting,” the titles suggest a program relating to his cherished summer holidays in the countryside, with musical illustrations of birdsong, peasant dances, babbling brooks, yodeling shepherds, and a thunderstorm. In his pastoral evocations, Beethoven was building on at least 300 years of musical tradition, with Haydn’s pastoral oratorios The Creation and The Seasons serving as recent models. Where Beethoven’s symphony excels is that, rather than just being effects, the explicit programmatic elements all serve a structural purpose within the scope of symphonic form. Beethoven achieved a delicate balance in writing something with programmatic intent without compromising musical integrity or veering into kitsch.

The first movement, “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings upon Arriving in the Country,” opens with a blithe melody in the first violins over a soft drone in the cello and viola. Across the movement, Beethoven creates a feeling of serenity and stability by avoiding dissonances, favoring root-position chords, and staying in one key for long periods. Even with his sparing use of melodic and harmonic material, he maintains textural interest through his masterful orchestration.

“Scene by the Brook” is even more spacious than the preceding movement. Water gently flows in streams of eighth notes, ending with a classical cadenza of bird song. In the score, Beethoven even notates which bird each instrument is meant to evoke: nightingale (flute), quail (oboe), and cuckoo (clarinet). Next, Beethoven injects some humor into the symphony in the scherzo (“Merry Gathering of Countryfolk”), using rhythmic displacement to imitate a village tavern band struggling to keep it together.

A fierce summer storm interrupts the party in the next movement. Storm scenes were a cliché of pastoral music, but Beethoven scores it with such precision and economy that it has more impact than most. The storm builds from distant thunder, depicted by pianissimo tremolos in the low strings. Raindrops begin to fall in staccato eighth notes in the violins. Reserving the timpani, trombones, and piccolo for this movement, Beethoven deploys the orchestra’s full forces in a thunderous crescendo. The storm eventually passes, and an ascending flute scale leads seamlessly into the radiant final movement, “Shepherd’s Song—Happy, Thankful Feelings After the Storm.”

—Katherine Buzard

Giancarlo Guerrero

Giancarlo Guerrero

Conductor

Giancarlo Guerrero

Conductor

Six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor Giancarlo Guerrero named artistic leader of Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival.
The internationally renowned conductor and longtime music director of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and music director designate of the Sarasota Orchestra becomes the Festival’s eighth artistic director and principal conductor. Guerrero led the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in three acclaimed concerts during the 2024 season and has taken the reins of the Festival’s artistic team for the 2025 season. He will conduct four weeks next summer. The Festival has presented free classical concerts since 1935 and attracts hundreds of thousands each year.
“We are thrilled to welcome Giancarlo Guerrero to Chicago to lead what is regarded as the United States’ most important free classical music institution,” said Paul Winberg, Grant Park Orchestral Association President and CEO. “Giancarlo is not only a brilliant conductor with a stellar reputation; he has a history of curating programs that are exciting, surprising, and inventive. Also, our musicians are tremendously excited about working with him. His concerts last summer sparked a palpable energy from our audiences. It is a joy to listen to the music he conducts. The Grant Park Music Festival is highly anticipated by Chicagoans each year; we are confident that our future is in excellent hands with Giancarlo at the podium.”
Praised for his “viscerally powerful performances” (Boston Globe) and described as “at once vigorous, passionate, and nuanced” (BachTrack), Guerrero is one of the most respected orchestra conductors in the world. He succeeds Carlos Kalmar, who served in the position for 25 seasons, and will now hold the title of conductor laureate. Guerrero is familiar to Chicago audiences through his frequent appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In addition, he has led multiple programs with the Grant Park Music Festival since his 2008 debut.
“From the moment I first walked onto the stage of the glorious Pritzker Pavilion, and looked out at the sea of people – a snapshot of the entire city of Chicago – it was immediately apparent what a gift the Grant Park Music Festival is to the community. In the heart of this vibrant downtown, in one of the most exciting cities in the world, here is a festival dedicated to orchestral music and designed to be enjoyed by everyone. The mission of the Festival aligns closely with my philosophy that music is meant to be enjoyed by people from all walks of life, without boundaries,” said Guerrero. “I felt such a natural, easy connection with these incredible musicians – including both the stellar orchestra and the spectacular chorus. I recognized sparks flying, musically speaking, from my first interactions with them from the podium. These musicians, hailing from orchestras and opera companies from the region and throughout the world, are really the best of the best.”
During the 2024 Festival, Guerrero led two programs: the first featuring Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 on July 10, and the second featuring Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with Maurice Duruflé's Requiem on July 12 and 13. Reviewing the Shostakovich program for the Chicago Tribune, Hannah Edgar praised Guerrero’s “curatorial and interpretive creativity” and added that his pre-performance remarks to the audience “provided context for both pieces… that mirrored his interpretation of the symphony: emphatic, practiced and assertive.” Recognizing that he might be a candidate to replace Kalmar, Edgar concluded that “Guerrero will have no problem leaving his mark.”
Festival concertmaster Jeremy Black also lauded Guerrero’s leadership of the orchestra, saying, “Giancarlo established a genuine rapport with the orchestra. I remember hearing one of my orchestra colleagues say, ‘he lit a fire under us!’ He's a superb musician who can inspire us to perform at the highest level.”
“The Grant Park Music Festival drew hundreds of thousands of people during our recently concluded summer season,” added Grant Park Orchestral Association Board Chair Adam Grais. “Not only do our concerts attract dedicated music lovers and introduce thousands of young people to classical music, we also present some of the world’s most esteemed musicians to our stage. Concertgoers tell me that the Festival is one of the things they most love about Chicago. And Giancarlo possesses the talent, relationships, vision and drive to lead our organization to even greater accomplishments in the future.”
The board of directors of the Grant Park Orchestral Association enthusiastically voted unanimously at an August 15 meeting to name Guerrero as the successor to Kalmar, who had announced in 2021 that he was stepping down at the end of the Festival 2024. The search for Kalmar’s replacement was a three-year process undertaken by a search committee composed of musicians, members of the board of directors and community leaders. The Festival team will announce Guerrero’s plans for the 2025 season in January.
About Giancarlo Guerrero
In the 2024-2025 season, Guerrero will serve in his 16th and final year as music director of the Nashville Symphony. Guerrero collaborated with the Nashville Symphony to premiere over two dozen new works and release 22 commercial albums. These definitive recordings garnered 13 GRAMMY® Award nominations and six GRAMMY® wins, cementing Guerrero and the Symphony’s international reputation as standard-bearers for recordings of contemporary American music. As part of his commitment to fostering the work of contemporary composers, Guerrero, together with composer Aaron Jay Kernis, also guided the creation of Nashville Symphony’s biannual Composer Lab & Workshop for young and emerging composers.
Guerrero has collaborated throughout his career with leading ensembles in North America, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Philadelphia Orchestra, among others. Internationally, he has maintained longstanding relationships with esteemed orchestras in Europe, Latin America and Australia/New Zealand. Guerrero also recently completed a six-season tenure as music director of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in Poland. Guerrero previously held posts as the principal guest conductor of both the Cleveland Orchestra Miami Residency and the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, music director of the Eugene Symphony, and associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero immigrated during his childhood to Costa Rica, where he joined the local youth symphony. He studied percussion and conducting at Baylor University in Texas and earned his master’s degree in conducting at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Given his beginnings in civic youth orchestras, Guerrero is particularly engaged with conducting training orchestras and has worked with the Curtis School of Music, Colburn School in Los Angeles, National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) and Yale Philharmonia, as well as with the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando program, which provides an intensive music education to promising young students from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

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Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell

Chorus Director

Christopher Bell

Chorus Director

Christopher Bell has served as Chorus Director of the Grant Park Chorus since 2002. Bell oversees a chorus of more than 100 singers, along with the Project Inclusion Vocal Fellows, a unique program designed to encourage singers under-represented in the field. Bell prepares all of the Festival’s choral programs, and conducts the orchestra and chorus for several concerts.
During his tenure, he and the chorus have been recipients of the coveted Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence given by Chorus America, as well as glowing reviews from both critics and audiences alike. In 2013, Bell won the Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art.
In a career spanning thirty years thus far, Christopher has been chorusmaster of the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union (1987–1990), Chorus Master of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra Chorus (1989–2002) the Belfast Philharmonic Choir (2005–2011) the Edinburgh Festival Chorus (2007–2018) and the Washington Chorus (2017–2020).
Largely responsible for the formation of the National Youth Choir of Scotland (NYCOS) in 1996, he has been its Artistic Director ever since. The National Youth Choir of Scotland has toured to Sweden, Ireland, Chicago, Hungary, Germany and Central Europe, has won a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award, and performed at the BBC Proms and the Edinburgh International Festival to great acclaim. NYCOS organisation has expanded to has expanded over 25 years to include fifteen regional choirs, three national choirs and an extensive education and publishing arm.
Bell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the Royal Conservatoire in Scotland in 2012, in recognition of his contribution to performing arts in Scotland. In 2015, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music from the University of Aberdeen.
Born in Belfast, Bell was educated at Edinburgh University and held his first post as Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony. Since then, he has worked with many of the major orchestras in the UK and Ireland, including the Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National, BBC Scottish Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Scottish Chamber, City of London Sinfonia, London Concert, RTE National Symphony, RTE Concert and the Bournemouth Symphony. Between 2009 and 2017 he was Associate Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra. Recent orchestral performances have included San Francisco Symphony and the Orchestra of Opera North.
He is well-known for his work with young musicians. Before his current post with the National Youth Choir of Scotland, he was the founding conductor of the Ulster Youth Choir, director of the Total Aberdeen Youth Choir for six years, and director of the prestigious RSNO Junior Chorus for twenty four years.

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Jeremy Black, concertmaster

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Josh Jones, principal

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Doug Waddell

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Ian Murrell

John E. Orduña

Wilbur Pauley

Douglas Peters

Jackson Pierzina

Martin Lowen Poock

Ian Prichard

Dan Richardson

Stephen Richardson

Benjamin D. Rivera

Scott Uddenberg

Schyler Vargas

Vince Wallace

Aaron Wardell

Ronald Watkins

Jonathon Weller

Peter Wesoloski

Jonathan Wilson

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2025 Digital Programs

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Grant Park Orchestra

Osmo Vänskä

Paul Huang

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Giancarlo Guerrero

Christopher Bell

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