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.

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.

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. 

Edward Elgar (1857–1934) was one of the most important and influential English composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His music helped usher in a renewed sense of national pride in British classical composition during a time when German and Italian composers dominated the European concert scene. Elgar’s style combined sweeping romanticism with a unique sense of English character, and his works continue to be performed widely today.

Born in the small village of Broadheath, Worcestershire, Elgar was largely self-taught in music, having learned the fundamentals from his father, who owned a music shop. Despite not receiving formal conservatory training, Elgar displayed early talent as a violinist, organist, and composer. He spent years working in relative obscurity, supporting himself by teaching and conducting local ensembles, while writing increasingly ambitious chamber and choral works.

His major breakthrough came in 1899 with the Enigma Variations, a set of fourteen orchestral variations each based on a musical theme and portraying one of his friends and colleagues, with a mysterious hidden theme that has intrigued listeners for over a century. The success of the Enigma Variations launched Elgar into national and international fame and established his reputation as a composer of exceptional originality and emotional depth.

Elgar followed this with a series of celebrated works, including The Dream of Gerontius (1900), a powerful oratorio based on a poem by Cardinal Newman. Though its premiere was poorly received due to under-rehearsal, it quickly became regarded as a masterpiece and remains a cornerstone of the choral repertoire. His Pomp and Circumstance Marches, especially March No. 1 (1901), became emblematic of British ceremonial music, with its "Land of Hope and Glory" theme becoming a patriotic anthem.

In the early 1900s, Elgar composed several large-scale orchestral works, including two symphonies, a violin concerto, and the Introduction and Allegro for Strings. These works are noted for their lyrical beauty, complex textures, and emotional range. Elgar was also deeply respected for his skillful orchestration, which allowed him to create vivid and dynamic sound worlds.

Though knighted in 1904 and appointed Master of the King’s Musick in 1924, Elgar’s later years were marked by personal loss and a decline in public interest in his music as modernist trends began to dominate the musical landscape. One of his final major works, the Cello Concerto in E Minor (1919), is widely regarded as a poignant farewell to a vanished world, reflecting the grief and disillusionment of the post–World War I era.

Edward Elgar died in 1934, but his music has endured and even enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in the decades since. He is remembered not only as a composer of technical brilliance and expressive power but also as a key figure in the reawakening of English music. His legacy remains central to British musical identity, and his works continue to inspire generations of musicians and audiences alike.

London-born Anna Clyne is a GRAMMY-nominated composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Described as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods” in a New York Times profile and as “fearless” by NPR, Clyne’s work often includes collaborations with cutting-edge choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians. In October 2020, AVIE Records released Mythologies, a portrait album featuring Clyne’s works recorded live by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Several upcoming projects explore Clyne’s fascination with visual arts, including Color Field for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, inspired by the artwork of Mark Rothko; Between the Rooms, a film with choreographer Kim Brandstrup and LA Opera, as well as Woman Holding a Balance, a film collaboration with Orchestra of St. Luke's and artist Jyll Bradley (whom Clyne also teamed up with for the film, Pardes, commissioned by the Scottish Ensemble).

Other upcoming premieres include A Thousand Mornings for the Fidelio Trio; Fractured Time for the Kaleidoscope Ensemble; and Overflow for wind ensemble, inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson, composed for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Clyne composed a trilogy of Beethoven-inspired works, which premiered in 2020 for Beethoven’s 250th anniversary: Stride for string orchestra, inspired by Beethoven's Sonata Pathétique, premiered by the Australian Composers Orchestra; Breathing Statues, premiered by the Calidore String Quartet; and Shorthand for solo cello and string quintet premiered by The Knights at Caramoor.

Other recent premieres include Sound and Fury, first performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Pekka Kuusisto in Edinburgh; and her Rumi-inspired cello concerto, DANCE, premiered with Inbal Segev at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, led by Cristian Măcelaru. DANCE was also recently recorded by Segev and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Marin Alsop.

Clyne served as composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, L’Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, and Berkeley Symphony. She is currently the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Associate Composer through the 2021-2022 season and a mentor composer for Orchestra of St Luke's DeGaetano Composer Institute.

Clyne’s music is represented on the AVIE Records, Cantaloupe Music, Cedille, MajorWho Media, New Amsterdam, Resound, Tzadik, and VIA labels. Both Prince of Clouds and Night Ferry were nominated for 2015 GRAMMY Awards. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899), born in Vienna, Austria, was a renowned composer and conductor, celebrated for his significant contributions to the genre of waltz music. As the eldest son of Johann Strauss Sr., he grew up in a musical environment that greatly influenced his career. Strauss initially pursued a career in banking but ultimately followed his passion for music, quickly rising to prominence in the Viennese music scene.

Strauss is best known for his enchanting waltzes, which transformed the dance form into a sophisticated art. His most famous works include "An der schönen, blauen Donau" (The Blue Danube) and the operetta "Die Fledermaus," both of which remain staples in classical music repertoires today. His innovative approach to composition expanded the traditional waltz structure, incorporating rich melodies and intricate orchestration that captivated audiences across Europe.

Throughout his career, Strauss earned the title "The Waltz King," a testament to his enduring legacy in the world of music. He conducted numerous successful concerts and became a beloved figure in Vienna, where his music played a vital role in the city's cultural identity. Strauss’ timeless compositions continue to resonate, ensuring his place as one of the most influential composers in history.