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.

Nicole Paiement has gained an international reputation as a conductor of contemporary music and opera. Her numerous recordings include many world premiere works.

Maestro Paiement’s 2012 Dallas Opera debut conducting Peter Maxwell Davies’ 1979 thriller, The Lighthouse earned rave reviews. Subsequently, Paiement was appointed Principal Guest Conductor at The Dallas Opera. Paiement has since returned to Dallas to conduct performances of Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers, as well as the critically acclaimed and highly anticipated world premiere of Joby Talbot’s opera Everest, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and Douglas Cuomo’s Arjuna’s Dilemma. In 2018, Paiement conducted the US premiere of Michel Van Der Aa’s Sunken Garden.

As Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle, Paiement has conducted many new productions, including: world premieres of Lou Harrison’s final version of Young Caesar, Dante De Silva’s commissioned opera Gesualdo, Prince of Madness (presented as a graphic opera), Luciano Chessa’s commissioned opera A Heavenly Act, the commissioned chamber version of John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby, the premiere of the re-orchestration of Terence Blanchard’s Champion in collaboration with SFJAZZ Center; the West Coast premieres of John Rea’s re-orchestration of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck and Philip Glass’ Orphée; Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts; Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar; Francis Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias; Kurt Weill’s Mahagonny Songspiel; the American Premieres of Adam Gorb’s Anya 17 and Tarik O’Regan’s Heart of Darkness; the San Francisco Bay Area return of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking; a new production of Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse;  Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles; and Jonathan Dove’s Flight.  In 2017/18 Paiement conducted a new double bill of Jake Heggie’s At the Statue of Venus and Berstein’s Trouble in Tahiti in collaboration with SFJAZZ as well as  Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince. In the 2018/19 season, Opera Parallèle made it’s debut at Phillip Glass’ Days & Nights Festival with Glass’ In the Penal Colony and Paiement conducted Today it Rains, a commissioned opera by Laura Kaminsky based on the life of Georgia O’Keeffe and a return season of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince. In 2020, Opera Parallèle will present a new version of Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk as part of the 90th Birthday celebrations for the opera’s namesake, with Paiement at the helm for this exciting production.

Additionally, Paiement has served as the Artistic Director of the BluePrint Project at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) where she has commissioned, premiered, and recorded works from many living American composers. At SFCM, she holds the Jean and Josette Deleage Distinguished Chair in New Music. Paiement previously served as the Director of Ensembles at the University of California – Santa Cruz (UCSC). In 2014, she was awarded the UCSC Eminent Professor Award. In 2015, she received the Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship in recognition of her outstanding contributions and achievement in artistic scholarship and teaching.

In 2016, Paiement was awarded the American Composer’s Forum “Champion of New Music Award” for her outstanding contributions to contemporary music.

Ms. Paiement is a very active guest conductor. Most recently, she made her debut at Lyric Opera of Chicago with Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, as well as performances with the Washington National Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival (2016 – 2018) and a debut at Seattle Opera with Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. Other prior engagements include Talbot’s Everest with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Puts’ Silent Night at The Atlanta Opera and Washington National Opera for the world premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s The Dictator’s Wife. Paiement also recently conducted the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s If I Were You with Merola Opera Program, San Francisco.

Upcoming engagements include Paiement’s Canadian debut at Opéra de Montréal with Benjamin’s Written on Skin, and a return to the Dallas Opera for a double bill of Pulcinella & La Voix Humaine. 2020 will also see Paiement perform Talbot’s Everest with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Theatre, London. Future seasons also include debuts with the Houston Grand Opera and Cincinnati Opera.

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. 

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) was a pioneering Czech composer, often regarded as the father of Czech national music. Born in Plzeň, Smetana displayed musical talent from an early age, studying piano and composition. He later moved to Prague, where he became involved in the vibrant cultural scene, composing operas, symphonic poems, and chamber music that incorporated Czech folk themes and melodies, establishing a distinct national style.

Smetana's most famous works include the opera The Bartered Bride, which premiered in 1866 and remains a staple of the operatic repertoire, and the symphonic cycle (My Country), which celebrates the beauty of the Czech landscape and heritage. His compositions are characterized by their emotional depth, innovative structures, and rich orchestration, reflecting both personal experiences and national identity. Despite facing personal tragedies, including the loss of his first-born child, Smetana's music continued to resonate with audiences and influence future generations of composers.

In addition to his compositional achievements, Smetana was an advocate for Czech music and culture, actively promoting the establishment of a national musical identity. He founded the first singing school at the Provisional Theatre in Prague and organized concerts to showcase Czech compositions. His legacy is preserved through numerous recordings, performances, and the Bedřich Smetana Museum, which honors his contributions to music and Czech culture.

American composer-librettist Mark Adamo's work has returned to the stage in force. Opera Holland Park gave the U. K. premiere of his first opera, Little Women, in July of 2022;  Pittsburgh Festival Opera completed and introduced its filmed version his second opera, Lysistrata, that same month, which also saw the Tanglewood Institute’s premiere of the wind-orchestra version of the Overture to Lysistrata, arranged by Peter Martin.  Up next is the New York premiere of Last Year, his concerto for cello and string orchestra which refracts Vivaldi’s Four Seasons through the prism of a changing climate; Mei-Ann Chen leads soloist Jeffrey Zeigler and the American Composers’ Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in October. Teatro Colón, in Buenos Aires, gives the Argentine premiere in Buenos Aires of Little Women in November; that same month, Boston Modern Orchestra Project gives the East Coast premiere of The Lord of Cries, the opera he co-created with composer John Corigliano for Santa Fe Opera in 2021. These performances will be recorded for the work’s premiere release on CD. The autumn of 2021 saw the first performances of Last Year in San Francisco and in Houston, followed, in December, by Chicago Opera Theater’s new production of Becoming Santa Claus, Adamo’s fourth opera, which was conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya and directed by Kyle Lang. This followed the warmly received Dutch premiere by the Dutch National Opera Academy of Little Women, given in Amsterdam in January of 2020. 

Becoming Santa Claus was released on DVD/Blu-Ray in September 2017; it was commissioned and introduced by Dallas Opera in December 2015. The DVD release followed a new production in Boulder, Colorado, which Adamo directed, of a chamber version of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, his third full-length opera, which was commissioned and introduced by San Francisco Opera in June 2013 and which itself followed a busy season of opera and chamber premières. In May 2012, Fort Worth Opera opened its first production of Lysistrata; that September, the Constella Festival in Cincinnati opened their season with August Music, for flute duo and string quartet, commissioned by Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway: in December, Sasha Cooke and the New York Festival of Song introduced The Racer's Widow, a cycle of five American poems for mezzo-soprano, cello, and piano; and, in April 2013, baritone Thomas Hampson and the Jupiter String Quartet introduced Aristotle, after the poem by Billy Collins, in concerts at the Mondavi Center in Davis, California before continuing to Boston and New York under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

Adamo first attracted national attention with his uniquely celebrated début opera, Little Women, after the Alcott novel. Introduced by Houston Grand Opera in 1998 and revived there in 2000, Little Women is one of the most frequently performed American operas of the last fifteen years, with more than 135 national and international engagements in cities ranging from New York to London, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, San Francisco, Adelaide, Perth, Mexico City, Brugges, Banff, Calgary, and Tokyo, where it served as the official U.S. cultural entrant to the 2005 World Expo. The Houston Grand Opera revival (2000) was telecast by PBS/WNET on Great Performances in 2001 and released on CD by Ondine that same year; in fall 2010, Naxos released this performance on DVD and on Blu-ray. (Little Women was the first American opera recorded in high-definition television.) Comparable enthusiasm greeted the début of the larger-scaled Lysistrata, Adamo's second opera, adapted from Aristophanes' comedy but also including elements from Sophocles' Antigone. Lysistrata was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera for its 50th anniversary and introduced in March 2005: its New York City Opera debut in March 2006 led to concert performances by Washington National Opera (May 2006) and Music at the Modern by the Van Cliburn Foundation (May 2007) before the new staging of the work at Fort Worth Opera in spring 2012, which was included on the best-of-2012 lists of both D Magazine and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

While Adamo's principal work continues to be for the opera house, over the past five years he has ventured not only into chamber music but also into symphonic and choral composition. In addition to Last Year, Adamo's first concerto, Four Angels, for harp and orchestra, was commissioned by the National Symphony Orchestra and debuted in June 2007: the Utah Symphony, led by their Music Director Emeritus, Keith Lockhart, presented Four Angels in January 2011. In May 2007, Washington's Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, for which Adamo served as its first composer-in-residence, performed the revised version of Adamo's Late Victorians, a cantata for singing voice, speaking voice, and orchestra: Naxos released Late Victorians in 2009 on Eclipse's all-Adamo CD, which also included Alcott Music, from Little Women, for strings, harp, celesta, and percussion; "Regina Coeli," an arrangement of the slow movement of Four Angels for harp and strings alone; and the Overture to Lysistrata for medium orchestra. In April of 2010, Harold Rosenbaum's New York Virtuoso Singers paired six of Adamo's newly published choral scores with the complete chamber-choral work of John Corigliano. This concert featured the New York premières of Cantate Domino (after Psalm 91), Pied Beauty and God's Grandeur (Gerard Manley Hopkins; commissioned by the Gregg Smith Singers), Matewan Music (Appalachian folk-tune variations), Supreme Virtue (Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao te Ching), and The Poet Speaks of Praising (Rilke: commissioned and introduced by Chanticleer). 

Composer-in-residence at New York City Opera from 2001 through 2006, where he led the VOX: Showcasing American Composers program, Adamo also served as Master Artist at Atlantic Center for the Arts in May 2003. Since 2007 he has served as the principal teacher of American Lyric Theatre's Composer-Librettist Development Program in New York, in which he coaches teams of composers and librettists in developing their work for the stage. 

Adamo began his education in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where, as a freshman in the Dramatic Writing Program, he received the Paulette Goddard Remarque Scholarship for outstanding undergraduate achievement in playwriting. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Music Degree cum laude in composition in 1990 from the Catholic University of America. He and his spouse, the composer John Corigliano, divide their time between Manhattan and Kent Cliffs, New York. His music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc. 

Born on August 22nd 1862, French composer and pianist Claude Debussy was an incredibly influential force in the French music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He began his first formal musical training whilst in his paternal aunt’s home in Cannes with his pregnant mother in 1870. They had fled here from Paris in order to escape the dangers of the Franco-Prussian war. These first piano lessons took place with Italian violinist named Cerutti. In 1871 he began lessons with Mari Mauté de Fleurville. Under the tuition of these teachers, his talent became evident and in 1872, he enterd the Paris Conservatory. In his 11-year period he studied composition with Ernest Guiraud, music theory and history with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray, organ with Cesar Franck and solfège with Albert Lavignac. He also formed a life-long friendship with fellow student and pianist Isidor Philipp who would go on to become something of an authority on playing Debussy’s piano music after Debussy’s death. 

Although he showed evidence of immense talent, the Conservatory found him difficult, as he was always keen to explore the harmonies and dissonant intervals of which they did not approve. In 1884, he won the Prix de Rome and began his residence at the Villa Medici in Rome. This wish to ignore what academics thought about his music really came through in his time in Rome. In June 1885 he wrote that ‘I am sure the institute would not approve…there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!’ The works that he submitted to the academy in this time were, as he predicted, not well received. They felt his music was somewhat bizarre yet this was the beginning from which his later stylistic features would emerge. In 1888-9 Debussy visited Bayreuth and was exposed to the gargantuan cultural force of Wagnerian opera, which had a long-standing impact upon his work. He also met Erik Satie, who was a supporter of Debussy’s experimentally naming pieces, in a symbolist-influenced manner. Whilst attending the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, Debussy had his first contact with Javanese gamelan music, the scales, melodies, rhythms and ensemble textures of which he incorporated into some of his works, notably Pagodes from his piano collection Estampes. He died on March 25th 1918 in his Paris home from cancer. 

His music is generally noted for its sensory content and somewhat unusual use of tonality, as well as the distinct influence of symbolist literature. His works are inseparable from the impressionist movement, along with those of Ravel, despite the fact that Debussy disliked the term intensely, when applied to his compositions. His use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism can be heard in the works of many French composers to follow.

Source: G. Schirmer