Elgar Enigma Variations

Program

Johann Strauss Jr. Overture to Die Fledermaus (9 mins)

Anna Clyne Dance (25 mins)

...when you're broken up
...if you've torn the bandage off
...in the middle of fighting
...in your blood
...when you're perfectly free

Edward Elgar Enigma Variations (31 mins)

Enigma: Andante
Var.I. "C.A.E." L'istesso tempo
Var. II. "H.D.S.- P." Allegro
Var. III. "R.B.T." Allegretto
Var. IV. "W.M.B." Allegro di molto
Var. V. "R.P.A." Moderato
Var. VI. "Ysobel" Andantino
Var. VII. "Troyte" Presto
Var. VIII. "W.N." Allegretto
Var. IX. "Nimrod" Moderato
Var. X. "Dorabella” Intermezzo. Allegretto
Var. XI. "G.R.S." Allegro di molto
Var. XII. "B.G.N." Andante
Var. XIII. "***” Romanza. Moderato
Var. XIV. "E.D.U." Finale

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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Courtney Lewis

Courtney Lewis

Conductor

Courtney Lewis

Conductor

Courtney Lewis is currently celebrating ten years with the Jacksonville Symphony, anchored in the belief that music holds the power to transform lives, Courtney Lewis has established himself as one of his generation’s most dynamic conductors. Currently in his tenth season as Music Director of the Jacksonville Symphony, Lewis has designed an ambitious mission to enrich the surrounding community with innovative symphonic programming, creating the highest quality of art possible, accessible to all.
The Florida-Times Union has noted [that] “it’s beyond debate that Lewis has been a transformative figure … leading the [Jacksonville] Symphony.” Under Lewis’ leadership, the artistic caliber has improved considerably, and the Symphony has grown in size and national reputation, recently making its first broadcast on NPR’s Performance Today.

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Inbal Segev

Inbal Segev

Cello

Inbal Segev

Cello

Inbal Segev is “a cellist with something to say” (Gramophone). Combining “thrillingly projected, vibrato-rich playing” (Washington Post) with “complete dedication and high intelligence” (San Francisco Classical Voice), she makes solo appearances at leading international venues and with preeminent orchestras and conductors worldwide. Celebrated for her fresh insights into music’s great masterworks, the Israeli American cellist is equally committed to reinvigorating the cello repertoire, and has commissioned and premiered major new works from an international who’s who of today’s foremost contemporary composers.
Segev is personally responsible for commissioning, premiering, recording, and championing new works by important living composers from the U.S., Israel, and beyond. Most recently, she commissioned a new cello concerto from Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva, giving its world and European premieres in 2023-24 with the Dallas Symphony and London Philharmonic orchestras respectively. To encourage creative recovery during the early pandemic lockdowns, she launched 20 for 2020, a commissioning, recording, and video project for 20 cutting-edge composers, including John Luther Adams, Viet Cuong, and Angélica Negrón, all of whom wrote new works in response to the worldwide crisis. Other projects include Anna Clyne’s concerto DANCE, which Segev co-commissioned and premiered under Cristian Măcelaru’s leadership at the 2019 Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California, before recording the work alongside Elgar’s iconic concerto with Marin Alsop and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Released by Avie, the album was an instant success, topping the Amazon Classical Concertos chart and inspiring glowing praise from The Guardian, BBC Radio 3 and other outlets; DANCE’s opening movement was named among NPR Music’s “Favorite Songs of 2020,” receiving more than eleven million listens on Spotify.
Segev has also brought to life a host of other new works. It was she who gave the world premiere performance of Timo Andres’s concerto Upstate Obscura at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (2018); premiered Dan Visconti’s Cello Concerto with the California Symphony (2017); commissioned and premiered Gity Razaz’s multimedia piece Legend of Sigh at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust (2015); premiered and recorded Lucas Richman’s Declaration with the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony (2015); co-commissioned and premiered Avner Dorman’s Cello Concerto with the Anchorage Symphony (2012); and premiered Paola Prestini’s Oceano at Columbia University (2002). She also gave the overdue U.S. premiere of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s long-lost, posthumously reconstructed Cello Concerto, and joined the Albany Symphony for the first performance of Christopher Rouse’s Violoncello Concerto since its premiere 24 years earlier by Yo-Yo Ma.
Segev’s premiere recordings crown a rich and wide-ranging discography. Having studied Bach’s solo cello suites for many years, she recorded the complete cycle over a six-month period with Grammy-winning producer Da-Hong Seetoo at New York City’s Academy of Arts and Letters for release by Vox Classics in 2015; documenting this process behind the scenes, a companion film by Nick Davis Productions was screened at Lincoln Center and in Maine and Bogotá. Segev’s other recordings include a Romantic program of Schumann, Chopin, and Grieg with pianist Juho Pohjonen (Avie, 2018); Dohnányi serenades with the Amerigo Trio (Navona, 2011); cello sonatas by Beethoven and Boccherini with pianist Richard Bishop (Opus One, 2000); and live accounts of C.P.E. Bach’s A-major concerto and other works (Music@Menlo, 2023). The cellist can also be heard playing music by Peter Nashe on the soundtrack of Bee Season, a 2005 feature film starring Richard Gere and Juliette Binoche.
A prodigy who first played for the Israeli president at just eight years old, Segev came to international attention ten years later when she made concerto debuts with both the Berlin Philharmonic and Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta. Since then, she has appeared as soloist with such leading orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Dortmund Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lyon, Pittsburgh Symphony, Polish National Radio Symphony, and St. Louis Symphony, collaborating with Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Edward Gardner, Kirill Karabits, Lorin Maazel, Cristian Măcelaru, Zubin Mehta, and other of the world’s foremost conductors. She co-curated the Baltimore Symphony’s New Music Festival from its inception in 2017.
Segev has given solo performances of Bach’s cello suites at international venues from New York’s Lincoln Center and Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Shanghai Concert Hall and Jerusalem Theatre. Her other recital highlights include appearances at New York’s Alice Tully Hall and Merkin Concert Hall, Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, and Bogotá’s Teatro Mayor. Also a dedicated chamber artist, she has given ensemble performances at Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Chicago’s Harris Theater, undertaken international tours with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and collaborated with such esteemed musicians as Emanuel Ax, Jeremy Denk, Anthony McGill, Jason Vieaux, and the Vogler Quartet. With former New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and violist Karen Dreyfus, she is a founding member of the Amerigo Trio.
Segev started composing during the pandemic, and her album 20 for 2020 concludes with the first recording of Behold, her own composition for cello quartet. She went on to write B Natural, an homage to her teacher Aldo Parisot; scored for cello octet, this received its world premiere performance from the Yale Cellos ensemble at Yale University in 2023. Subsequent compositions include her string trio, which received its first performance from the Fort Worth Chamber Music Society in spring 2024; her clarinet trio, set to premiere in Israel in summer 2024, before receiving its U.S. premiere in Michigan; and I’m Nobody! Who are you?, an Emily Dickinson setting for unaccompanied women’s choir, scheduled to premiere in the 2024–25 season.
Besides holding regular interactive live-streamed masterclasses and Q&A sessions at the CelloBello resource center, Segev has been featured in a live Q&A session at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse and a dedicated episode of The Musical Life podcast series. Available at her YouTube channel and on the Tonebase platform, the cellist’s popular masterclass series, Musings with Inbal Segev, has inspired a generation of cellists.
A native of Israel, Inbal Segev began playing the cello at the age of five. At 16 she was invited by Isaac Stern to the U.S., where she continued her cello studies with Aldo Parisot, Joel Krosnick, Harvey Shapiro, and Beaux Arts Trio co-founder Bernard Greenhouse, earning degrees from Yale University and the Juilliard School. Today she lives in New York City with her husband, their teenage children, and her cellos, made by Francesco Ruggieri (1673) and Carl Becker & Son (1958) respectively.

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Johann Strauss Jr. (1825–1899)
Overture to Fledermaus (1874)
Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 9 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 24, 1935; Ebba Sundstrom, conductor

Where Johann Strauss Sr. elevated the Viennese waltz from its humble origins as a rural Austrian dance to a fashionable musical entertainment in the early 19th century, his son cemented it as the height of sophistication and elegance. Nicknamed “The Waltz King,” Johann Strauss Jr. also wrote a number of operettas, though none so successful as Die Fledermaus (The Bat), which premiered at Theater an der Wien in 1874.

In a nutshell, Gabriel von Eisenstein, a wealthy Viennese aristocrat, is sentenced to eight days in prison after humiliating a notary named Dr. Falke, having abandoned him in a public park dressed as a bat after a night of drunken revelry. He manages to delay his stint in jail so he can attend a masked ball thrown by the Russian Prince Orlofsky, which ends up being a ploy for Falke to get his revenge. Shenanigans ensue, complete with mistaken identities and disguises, all to the score of Strauss’s sparkling melodies and rhythmic vitality. The Overture to Die Fledermaus contains the opera’s central waltz, plus other memorable themes from the show, which bubble like the finest champagne.

Anna Clyne (b. 1980)
Dance (2019)
Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes including English Horn, two clarinets including bass clarinet, two bassoons including contrabassoon, two French horns, two trumpets, trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings, and solo cello
Performance time: 25 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
– Rumi

These words by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi inspired Anna Clyne’s concerto for cello and orchestra, Dance (2019). Each of the concerto’s five movements takes its title from a line of the poem, which encourages dancing both in times of pain and in times of joy. “I knew that I wanted to write a multi-movement work in which each movement had its own personality, its own character,” Clyne writes in the liner notes of the premiere recording featuring tonight’s soloist, cellist Inbal Segev. She continues, “I’ve known this Rumi poem for a while and always thought it would be a good source of inspiration—it’s short, has repetition, a clear form of five lines and a strong physicality (for example, ‘broken open,’ ‘in your blood’). It also has a sense of urgency that I found compelling for this piece.”

In 2016, conductor Marin Alsop introduced Segev and Clyne, and the three struck up a creative partnership. As an amateur cellist herself, Clyne was excited by the prospect of composing a cello concerto for Segev. Dedicated to Clyne’s father, Dance combines the cultures of Clyne’s English–Irish family and Polish–Jewish ancestry as well as Segev’s background as an Israeli–American. In addition to these cultural influences, the work is firmly rooted in musical traditions of the past. “Anna’s music has an old-soul sensibility but is fresh and modern at the same time,” Segev explains. “This juxtaposition of old and new has always appealed to me; it suits my playing, as well as the tone of my 1673 Ruggieri cello.”

In the first movement, “when you’re broken open,” the cello intones a slow melody over a placid bed of orchestral sound, with bowed vibraphone adding a glassy, ethereal quality. The second movement, “if you’ve torn the bandage off,” is more angular, though a lyrical folk-like melody accompanied by sweeping arpeggios offers some reprieve from the ferocity. Hearkening back to the Baroque, “in the middle of the fighting” takes the form of a lament over a repeated descending bassline. The fourth movement, “in your blood,” also recalls musical forms of the past with a canon that becomes increasingly dense as more layers are added. Finally, “when you’re perfectly free” begins in anguish, complete with col legno snaps, before another expansive melody emerges.

Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Enigma Variations (Variations on an Original Theme), op. 36 (1898)
Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 31 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 7, 1940; Hans Lange, conductor

Much ink has been spilled deciphering the supposed “Enigma” of Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36, or Enigma Variations. The word “Enigma” was only penciled into the score shortly before the premiere by Elgar’s publisher, August Johannes Jaeger. Nevertheless, the name stuck, and the mystery helped drum up publicity. Before the first performance on June 19, 1899, Elgar added to the intrigue, saying, “The ‘Enigma’ I will not explain—its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played . . . so, the principal Theme never appears.”

Some have taken this to mean that a famous piece of music could be layered on top as a counterpoint to the work’s theme. Scholars and armchair detectives alike have proposed numerous solutions, but we will likely never know the answer (if there even is one). Although Elgar was fond of puzzles and ciphers, he could have meant a more abstract silent theme—that of friendship. Each of the variations presents a musical sketch of one of his friends. “It may be understood that these personages comment or reflect on the original theme and each one attempts a solution of the Enigma, for so the theme is called,” Elgar clarified in a program note in 1911. Elgar further stated that the Enigma theme represented the “loneliness of the artist.” Therefore, in each variation, his friends provide their own solution to his loneliness through their companionship and support—something Elgar was in dire need of at the time as a struggling composer prone to depression. In a way, these musical portraits of his friends did solve his problem, as the Enigma Variations finally catapulted Elgar’s career at the age of 42.

Enigma Variations begins with a statement of the main theme, which came to Elgar while noodling on the piano with a cigar in his mouth after a long day of teaching. He then began to imagine how his different friends might play the melody, labeling each variation with a nickname or the initials of the dedicatee. The first variation, “CAE,” is a romantic expansion of the theme dedicated to his wife, Caroline Alice Elgar. Next, “HDS-P” refers to Hew David Stewart-Powell, an adept amateur pianist. “RBT” depicts Richard Bater Townsend, who took to riding around Oxford on a tricycle, ringing the bell constantly as he went. “WMB” then represents the brusque country squire William Meath Baker, while the chuckling woodwinds in “RPA” capture the nervous laugh of Richard Penrose Arnold. The opening viola passage in “Ysobel” pokes fun at Elgar’s viola student Isabel Fitton, who struggled with string crossing, though the composer’s affection for her is evident in the movement’s overall tenderness. “Troyte” invokes another student of Elgar’s, an architect named Arthur Troyte Griffin, who was apparently a clumsy piano player. Next, “WN” suggests not just Winifred Norbury’s characteristic laugh but also her beautiful 18th-century house.

Here we come to the most famous variation, “Nimrod,” dedicated to Elgar’s publisher, Jaeger. (The nickname comes from the Biblical hunter Nimrod, as “Jaeger” means “hunter” in German.) Jaeger was perhaps the most supportive figure in Elgar’s life after Alice. Jaeger had been on the receiving end of Elgar’s mood swings and letters declaring he was done with music, yet he remained convinced of Elgar’s talent. “Dorabella” is another tender variation for a supportive friend, Dora Penny. While “GRS” stands for organist George Robertson Sinclair, the variation actually captures an incident where Sinclair’s bulldog, Dan, fell into the River Wye (successfully escaping the waters and barking in triumph). Next, the heartfelt cello melody of “BGN” is an homage to amateur cellist Basil G. Nevinson. “***” is the most mysterious of the variations. Elgar claimed it was dedicated to Lady Mary Lygon, who was embarking on a sea voyage at the time (hence the references to Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage). However, some believe it is a nod to Elgar’s first love, Helen Jessie Weaver, who emigrated to New Zealand after breaking off their engagement in 1885. Finally, the artist himself emerges triumphant in “EDU” (Alice’s nickname for Edward), supported by the love of his friends.

—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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John J. Concepción

Micah Dingler

Jared V. Esguerra

Alec Fore

Ace Gangoso

Klaus Georg

Tejas Gururaja

Paul Hunter

Garrett Johannsen

William Johnson

James Judd

Tim Lambert

Tyler Lee

Stephen D. Noon

Marcos Ochoa

Brett Potts

Nicholas Pulikowski

Peder Reiff

Samuel Rosner

Matthew W. Schlesinger

Joe Shadday

Aaron Short

Brian Skoog

Michael St. Peter

Ryan Townsend Strand

Alan Taylor*

Sean J. Watland

Nate Widelitz

Walter Aldrich

Evan Bravos

Matthew Brennan

Michael Cavalieri

Ryan J. Cox

Ed Frazier Davis

Lifan Deng

Matthew Dexter+

Chris DiMarco

Christopher Filipowicz

Dimitri German

Dominic German

David Govertsen

Spencer Greene

Brian Hupp

Jan Jarvis

Jess Koehn

Eric Miranda

Ian Morris

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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Featuring

Grant Park Orchestra

Courtney Lewis

Inbal Segev

Program Notes

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Giancarlo Guerrero

Christopher Bell

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