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.

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.

Now celebrating its 60th anniversary season, the 80+ member Grant Park Chorus was formed in 1962 by Thomas Peck, who led the group until his death in 1994. His protégé, Michael Cullen, then led the chorus until 1997, after which a series of guest conductors worked with the ensemble until 2002 when an international search identified current chorus director, Christopher Bell. 

Winners of the 2006 Margaret Hillis Award for artistic excellence, the Grant Park Chorus is a fully professional ensemble and the majority of the vocalists reside in Illinois. In addition to frequent solo appearances and teaching careers, members of the Grant Park Chorus perform with ensembles such as Chicago a cappella, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Chicago Symphony Chorus. 

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. 

Recognized for intense, commanding performances, delivered with dazzling virtuosity and technical assurance, violinist Jennifer Koh is a forward-thinking artist dedicated to exploring a broad and eclectic repertoire, while promoting equity and inclusivity in classical music. She has expanded the contemporary violin repertoire through a wide range of commissioning projects and has premiered more than 100 works written especially for her. Her quest for the new and unusual, sense of endless curiosity, and ability to lead and inspire a host of multidisciplinary collaborators, truly set her apart.

Koh’s critically acclaimed series include Alone Together, Bach and Beyond,  Bridge to Beethoven, Limitless, Shared Madness, and The New American Concerto. This season, Koh continues The New American Concerto series,an ongoing, multi-season commissioning project that explores the form of the violin concerto and its potential for artistic engagement with contemporary societal concerns and issues through commissions from a diverse collective of composers. This season, Koh continues to perform Missy Mazzoli’s Violin Concerto Procession with the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Marin Alsop, Philharmonia Orchestra led by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, the Lahti Symphony conducted by Dalia Stasevska, and the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Teddy Abrams. Additional New American Concerto commissions include Tyshawn Sorey’s For Marcos Balter, premiered with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2020; Courtney Bryan’s Syzygy, premiered with the Chicago Sinfonietta in 2020; Lisa Bielawa’s Sanctuary, premiered with the Orlando Philharmonic in 2019 and given its New York premiere with the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 2021; Christopher Cerrone’s Breaks and Breaks, premiered with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 2018; and Vijay Iyer’s Trouble premiered at the 2017 Ojai Music Festival.

This season, as part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Koh performs the New York premiere of Everything Rises, an original, evening length staged musical work co-created with bass-baritone Davone Tines. The work is a collective exploration of family history—telling the stories of Koh’s mother, Gertrude Soonja Lee Koh, a refugee from North Korea during the Korean War, and Tines’s grandmother, Alma Lee Gibbs Tines, who holds vivid memories of anti-Black discrimination and violence dating back many years. These experiences—of the artists and their families—are both the inspiration for and subject matter of this project. Developed over multiple years by an all-BIPOC creative team including composer Ken Ueno and director Alexander Gedeon, the project powerfully reclaims Koh and Tines’ narratives about who they are and how they got to where they are now.

Koh’s Grammy Award-winning Alone Together—launched in 2020 as a commissioning project and virtual performance series—was developed in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the financial hardship it placed on many in the arts community. The project brought composers together in support of the many freelancers among them—with the more established composers each donating a new micro-work for solo violin, while also recommending a fellow freelance composer to write their own solo violin micro-work on paid commission from Koh’s artist-driven nonprofit ARCO Collaborative. In 2021, Cedille Records released an album of Koh’s Alone Together, featuring 39 world-premiere recordings, including works by Du Yun, George Lewis, Tania Léon, Andrew Norman, Missy Mazzoli, Ellen Reid, Vijay Iyer, Nina C. Young, and Angélica Negrón, and the recording won the Grammy Award in the Best Classical Instrumental Solo category. Koh performs works from Alone Together this season in New York as part of the Death of Classical series in collaboration with Concert Artists Guild, at Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas, and in a recital in New Orleans.

Koh regularly performs a broad range of concertos that reflect the breadth of her musical interests from traditional to contemporary. This season she makes her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut performing Bernstein’s Serenade, conducted by Andris Nelsons. She also performs Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Richmond and Wichita Falls symphony orchestras, and Vijay Iyer’s Violin Concerto Trouble, part of her The New American Concerto series, at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN. Past orchestral appearances have included performances of such traditional repertoire as Bach’s Violin Concerti with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with the Pittsburgh Symphony led by Manfred Honeck and RAI National Symphony with James Conlon; Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Bramwell Tovey and St. Louis Symphony led by Nicolas McGegan; Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Munich Philharmonic led by Lorin Maazel; and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons with the Detroit Symphony led by Nicolas McGegan.

She has performed 20th-century works including Bartók and Berg concerti with the Milwaukee Symphony led by Edo de Waart; Bernstein’s Serenade with the Minnesota Orchestra led by Juanjo Mena and the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; Lutosławski’s Chain 2 with the New York Philharmonic led by Lorin Maazel and the Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen; Scelsi’s Anahit with the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel; and Sibelius’s Violin Concerto with the New Jersey Symphony led by Xian Zhang, the São Paulo Symphonies with Marin Alsop, and the Columbus Symphony led by Rossen Milanov. This season, she performs the Sibelius concerto with the Suwon Philharmonic in South Korea. An advocate for music from our current millennium, she has performed Anna Clyne’s The Seamstress with the BBC Symphony led by Sakari Oramo, the Chicago Symphony led by Ludovic Morlot, and Cincinnati Symphony conducted by Louis Langrée; Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto with the Houston Symphony led by Christoph Eschenbach, Nashville Symphony conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero, and Cincinnati and Gothenburg Symphonies conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali; and Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing with the Baltimore Symphony under Marin Alsop.

Koh played the role of Einstein in the revival of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach from 2012 to 2014, and a particular highlight of her career was performing with St. Vincent (Annie Clark) and S. Epatha Merkerson at the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors in a tribute to Glass. In 2021, nearly a decade after collaborating in the revival performances of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, Koh reunited with director Robert Wilson and choreographer Lucinda Childs for a new work, Bach 6 Solo, that brings to life Bach's sonatas and partitas with theatrical elements and dance. Conceived by Koh and Wilson, the new work has Koh performing all six of Bach’s Partitas and Sonatas—widely considered the pinnacle of solo violin writing and typically performed alone on stage—with four dancers performing choreography by Childs. Bach 6 Solo premiered at the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière as part of the Festival d'Automne à Paris.

Koh brings the same sense of adventure and brilliant musicianship to her recordings as she does to her live performances. She has recorded more than a dozen albums with Chicago-based Cedille Records, including her Grammy Award-winning Alone Together album. Her Bach & Beyond recording series, originally released by Cedille Records in three installments (2012, 2015, and 2020), was released as a three-disc box set in September 2021. These recordings explore the history of the solo violin repertoire from Bach’s Six Sonatas and Partitas to the music of 20th- and 21st-century composers, including new commissions from Missy Mazzoli (Dissolve, O My Heart) and John Harbison (For Violin Alone). The collection also includes the world-premiere recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Frises, as well as works by Berio, Bartók, and Ysaÿe. Koh first launched Bach & Beyond as a three-part recital series in 2009 and she continues to perform these programs regularly. The Bach & Beyond recordings have received widespread critical acclaim, with the Chicago Tribune describing them as an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and “a monumental achievement.”

Other recordings for the label in recent years include 2019’s Limitless, on which leading composer-performers—including Lisa Bielawa, Vijay Iyer, Missy Mazzoli, Qasim Naqvi, Tyshawn Sorey, Wang Lu, Nina C. Young, and Du Yun—perform duo compositions with Koh that explore the artistic relationship between composer and performer, and a 2018 collection of works by Kaija Saariaho, whose music she has long championed and with whom she has closely collaborated. Titled Saariaho X Koh, the album includes the chamber version of the violin concerto Graal Théâtre with the Curtis Chamber Orchestra; Cloud Trio with violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellist Wilhelmina Smith; Tocar with pianist Nicolas Hodges; Aure with cellist Anssi Karttunen, with whom she premiered the violin and cello version in 2015; and Light and Matter with both Hodges and Karttunen, with whom she performed the French premiere in 2017.

Her discography on Cedille Records also includes Tchaikovsky: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Vedernikov; Two x Four in collaboration with her former teacher, violinist Jaime Laredo, and featuring double violin concerti by Bach, Philip Glass, and new commissions from Anna Clyne and David Ludwig; Signs, Games + Messages, a recording of violin and piano works by Janáček, Bartók, and Kurtág with Shai Wosner; Rhapsodic Musings: 21st Century Works for Solo Violin; the Grammy-nominated String Poetic, featuring the world premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s eponymous work, performed with pianist Reiko Uchida; Schumann’s complete violin sonatas, also with Ms. Uchida; Portraits with the Grant Park Orchestra under conductor Carlos Kalmar with concerti by Szymanowski, Martinů, and Bartók; Violin Fantasies, fantasies for violin and piano by Schubert, Schumann, Schoenberg, and saxophonist Ornette Coleman, again with Uchida; and Koh’s first Cedille album, from 2002, Solo Chaconnes, an earlier reading of Bach’s Second Partita coupled with chaconnes by Richard Barth and Max Reger. She is also the featured soloist on a recording of Higdon’s The Singing Rooms with the Atlanta Symphony led by Robert Spano for Telarc.

Koh is active not only in the concert hall and recording studio, but also as a lecturer and teacher. She has been on faculty at the Mannes School of Music since 2018 and has held residencies at Brown, Cornell, Duke, and Tulane Universities, as well as at the Curtis Institute of Music, Oberlin Conservatory and College, and University of California, Santa Barbara. She was the keynote speaker for the Royal College of Music’s 2020 “Orchestrating Isolation” conference and the League of American Orchestras’ 2018 annual conference.

She is the Founder and Artistic Director of ARCO Collaborative, an artist-driven nonprofit that advocates for inclusivity in classical music. Established in 2014, ARCO Collaborative commissions, develops, and produces new musical works that highlight artists of color and women composers in collaborations that bring forth stories previously unheard in Western art forms. She is also a member of Composers Now’sDistinguished Mentors Council and the board of the League of American Orchestras.

Born in Chicago of Korean parents, Koh began playing the violin by chance, choosing the instrument in a Suzuki-method program only because spaces for cello and piano had been filled. She made her debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. She was Musical America’s 2016 Instrumentalist of the Year and has also been recently recognized as a Virtuoso Award honoree by Concert Artists Guild in 2020 and “A Force of Nature” by the American Composers Orchestra in 2019. She performed for former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama and former First Lady of South Korea Kim Yoon-ok in 2011. She was a top prize winner at Moscow’s International Tchaikovsky Competition, winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, and a recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Oberlin College and studied at the Curtis Institute, where she worked extensively with Jaime Laredo and Felix Galimir.

Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on the east coast of England, on 22 November 1913. Although he was already composing vigorously as a child, he nonetheless felt the importance of some solid guidance and in 1928 turned to the composer Frank Bridge; two years later he went to the Royal College of Music in London, studying with Arthur Benjamin, Harold Samuel and John Ireland. While still a student, he wrote his ‘official’ Op. 1, the Sinfonietta for chamber ensemble, and the Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio, and in 1936 he composed Our Hunting Fathers, an ambitious song-cycle for soprano and orchestra, which confirmed Britten’s virtuosic vocal and instrumental technique. He was already earning his living as a composer, having joined the GPO (Post Office) Film Unit the previous year; the collaboration he began there with the poet W. H. Auden was to prove an important one throughout his career.

Britten found himself in the United States at the outset of World War Two and stayed there for three more years, returning to Britain in 1942. In America he produced a number of important works, among them the orchestral Sinfonia da Requiem, the song-cycle Les Illuminations for high voice and strings, and his Violin Concerto. With the opera Paul Bunyan he also made his first essay in a genre that would be particular important to him. 

Back in Britain, where as a conscientious objector he was excused military service, he began work on the piece that would establish him beyond question as the pre-eminent British composer of his generation – the opera Peter Grimes, premiered to an ecstatic reaction on 7 June 1945. The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell – a cornerstone of the orchestral repertoire – was first performed in the following year. Indeed, Britten now composed one major work after another, among them the operas The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring (1947), Billy Budd (1951), Gloriana (1953), The Turn of the Screw (1954), Noye’s Fludde (1957), A Midsummer Night’s Dream(1960), Owen Wingrave (1970–71) and Death in Venice (1971–73); the Nocturne for tenor and orchestra (1958), the War Requiem (1961–62), a Cello Symphony (1963) for Rostropovich and his orchestral Suite on English Folk Tunes (1974).

Britten’s importance in post-War British cultural life was enhanced by his founding of the English Opera Group in 1946 and the Aldeburgh Festival two years later. His career as a composer was matched by his outstanding ability as a performer: he was both a refined pianist and a spontaneous and fluent conductor – his Mozart was particularly highly esteemed. Britten’s later career was clouded by bouts of ill-health, culminating in heart disease. He never fully recovered from open-heart surgery in 1973, and died on 4 December 1976, at the age of 63, a few months after being appointed a life peer – the first composer ever to know that honour.

Benjamin Britten is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Pulitzer Prize and three-time Grammy-winner Jennifer Higdon (b. Brooklyn, NY, December 31, 1962) taught herself to play flute at the age of 15 and began formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. Despite these obstacles, Jennifer has become a major figure in contemporary Classical music. Her works represent a wide range of genres, from orchestral to chamber, to wind ensemble, as well as vocal, choral and opera. Her music has been hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having "the distinction of being at once complex, sophisticated but readily accessible emotionally", with the Times of London citing it as "...traditionally rooted, yet imbued with integrity and freshness." The League of American Orchestras reports that she is one of America's most frequently performed composers.

Higdon's list of commissioners is extensive and includes The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Atlanta Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Minnesota Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well such groups as the Tokyo String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, and the President's Own Marine Band. She has also written works for such artists as baritone Thomas Hampson, pianists Yuja Wang and Gary Graffman, violinists Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Jennifer Koh and Hilary Hahn. Her first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016; the first American opera to do so in the award's history.

Upcoming commissions include a chamber opera for Opera Philadelphia, a string quartet for the Apollo Chamber Players, a double percussion concerto for the Houston Symphony, an orchestral suite for the Made In America project, and a flute concerto for the National Flute Associations' 5oth anniversary.

Higdon received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, with the committee citing the work as "a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity." She has also received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, The Independence Foundation, the NEA, and ASCAP. In 2018, Higdon received the Eddie Medora King Award from the University of Texas at Austin.

Higdon has been a featured composer at many festivals including Aspen, Tanglewood, Vail, Norfolk, Grand Teton, and Cabrillo. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with several orchestras, including the Cincinnati Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Fort Worth Symphony. Between 2016 and 2018, Higdon served as the prestigious Barr Laureate Scholar at the University of Missouri Kansas City.

Higdon received the esteemed 2018 Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is awarded to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition.

Higdon enjoys more than 200 performances a year of her works. Her orchestral work, blue cathedral, is one of the most performed contemporary orchestral works in the repertoire, more than 650 performances since its premiere in 2000.

Her works have been recorded on over 60 CDs. Higdon has won three GRAMMY awards for Best Contemporary Classical Composition: first for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, in 2018 for her Viola Concerto, and in 2020 for her Harp Concerto. In 2020, Higdon's Percussion Concerto recording was inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

Dr. Higdon received a Bachelor's Degree in Music from Bowling Green State University, an Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Hartt School and Bowling Green State University. In 2019, Dr. Higdon was inducted into the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.

Dr. Higdon currently holds the Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), a Baltic resort near St Petersburg, on 5 June (17 June, New Style) 1882, the third son of Feodor Stravinsky, one of the principal basses at the Maryinsky (later Kirov) Theatre in St Petersburg. Stravinsky’s musical education began with piano lessons at home when he was ten; he later studied law at St Petersburg University and music theory with Fyodor Akimenko and Vassily Kalafati. His most important teacher, though, was Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied informally from the age of twenty, taking regular lessons from 1905 until 1908.

Although Stravinsky’s first substantial composition was a Symphony in E flat, written in 1906 under the tutelage of Rimsky-Korsakov, it was The Firebird, a ballet commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered by his Ballets Russes in Paris in 1910, that brought Stravinsky into sudden international prominence. In the next year he consolidated his reputation with Petrushka, like The Firebird a transformation of something essentially Russian into a work of surprising modernity. Stravinsky’s next major score – a third ballet commission from Diaghilev – is one of the major landmarks in the history of music: the blend of melodic primitivism and rhythmic complexity in The Rite of Spring marked the coming of modernism in music and was met with a mixture of astonishment and hostility. Stravinsky, now a Swiss resident, became established, as the most radical composer of the age.

A rapid succession of works – The Nightingale, an opera, in 1914, Renard in 1915, The Soldier’s Tale in 1918, the Symphonies of Wind Instruments two years after that – all reinforced his aesthetic dominance. The explicitly Russian flavour of his music – played out in the Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920), the opera buffa Mavra (1922) and Les Noces (1923), for four solo voices, chorus and an orchestra consisting of four pianos and percussion – now gave way to a more refined neo-classicism, beginning with the ballet Pulcinella (1920), for which Stravinsky went back to the music of Pergolesi, reworking it into something completely personal.

1920 was also the year that Stravinsky settled in France, taking French citizenship in 1934. Stravinsky expected to be elected to a vacant seat in the Académie française following Dukas’ death in 1935, and felt rebuffed when Florent Schmitt was elected in his stead. His ties to his adopted homeland were further loosened when, in a mere eight months, from November 1938, Stravinsky suffered the deaths of his daughter Lyudmilla, aged only 29, his mother and then his wife (and cousin) Catherine (née Nossenko); faced with an imminent war in Europe, Stravinsky and his second-wife-to-be Vera Sudeikin (née de Bosset) emigrated to the United States. After a year spent on the East Coast, including a stint as a lecturer at Harvard University, he and Vera soon settled in California, which they were to make their home for the rest of their lives.

Pulcinella turned out to be only the first of many works in which, over the next two decades, Stravinsky subdued the music of the past to his own purposes, among them the ‘divertimento’ The Fairy’s Kiss, derived from Tchaikovsky, and the ballet Apollon Musagète, both premiered in 1928. Two choral-orchestral works – the oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930) – showed that he could also work on an epic scale; and it was not long before he tackled a purely orchestral Symphony in C (1938), which was followed within four years by the Symphony in Three Movements. With Perséphone (1934), Jeu de Cartes (1936) and Orpheus (1946), the series of ballets also continued, generally in collaboration with George Balanchine, a partnership as important to dance in the twentieth century as Tchaikovsky’s and Petipa’s had been in the nineteenth. Stravinsky’s neo-classical period culminated in 1951 in his three-act opera The Rake’s Progress, to a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

One of the most unexpected stylistic volte-faces in modern music came in 1957, with the appearance of the ballet Agon; Stravinsky himself conducted its premiere at a 75th-birthday concert. Hitherto he had ignored Schoenbergian serialism, but in 1952 he began to study Webern’s music intensely and Agon was the first work in which he embraced serialism wholeheartedly, though the music that resulted was entirely his own – indeed, it has a formal elegance that he seemed to have been trying to capture in his neo-classical period. The chief works from Stravinsky’s late serial flowering are Threni, for six solo voices, chorus and orchestra (1958), The Flood, a ‘musical play for soloists, chorus and orchestra’ (1962), the ‘sacred ballad’ Abraham and Isaac (1963), Variations for Orchestra (1964) and Requiem Canticles (1966).

Stravinsky was also active as a performer of his own music, initially as a pianist but increasingly as a conductor. The first among contemporary composers to do so, he left a near-complete legacy of recordings of his own music, released then on CBS and now to be found on Sony Classical. His conducting career continued until 1967, when advancing age and illness forced him to retire from the concert platform. His tenuous grasp on life finally broke on 6 April 1971, in New York, and his body was flown to Venice for burial on the island of San Michele, near to the grave of Diaghilev.

Igor Stravinsky is published by Boosey & Hawkes

Source: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

A renaissance artist for modern times, Lera Auerbach is a widely recognized conductor, pianist, and composer. She is also an award-winning poet and an exhibited visual artist. All of her work is interconnected as part of a cohesive and comprehensive artistic worldview.

Lera Auerbach has become one of today’s most sought-after and exciting creative voices. Her performances and music are featured in the world’s leading stages – from Vienna’s Musikverein and London’s Royal Albert Hall to New York’s Carnegie Hall and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.

Auerbach’s exquisitely crafted, emotional, and boldly imaginative music reached global audiences. Orchestral collaborations include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Munich’s Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, and Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester, among many others. Auerbach’s works for orchestra are performed by the world’s leading conductors, including Manfred Honeck, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski, Charles Dutoit, Andris Nelsons, Osmo Vänskä, Hannu Lintu, and Marin Alsop, to mention only a few.

During the 22-23 season, Lera Auerbach performed concerts with Hilary Hahn at Wigmore Hall in London and Boulez Saal in Berlin. She also conducted Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony with Enescu Philharmonic in the subscription series, as well as played and conducted Mozart’s Piano Concerto K466. 

Other recent season highlights also included WienModern’s 3.5-hour production of Demons & Angels with Auerbach as conductor. Washington D.C.’s National Symphony premiered her 4th Symphony  “ARCTICA” – a work commissioned by the National Geographic Society.  Also, her Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra “Diary of a Madman”  commissioned by the Munich Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, received its global premieres with cellist Gautier Capuçon.

Her 4th Violin Concerto “NYx: Fractured Dreams” was commissioned and premiered by the New York Philharmonic with Alan Gilbert and Leonidas Kavakos, and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered her symphonic poem Eve’s Lament with Marin Alsop. In 2022, the Nuremberg State Philharmonic presented the world premiere of Symphony No. 5 “Paradise Lost” conducted by Joana Mallwitz, and her Symphony No. 6 ‘Vessels of Light,’ a commission of Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, was unveiled in Lithuania as part of the city’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations and received its American premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 19, 2023.

Amare at the Hague will present a two-week Auerbach Festival in October 2023, including all aspects of her artistic offerings, conducting, piano performance, composition, poetry, and visual art.

Her music is championed and recorded by today’s most prominent classical performers, including violinists Gidon Kremer, Leonidas Kavakos, Daniel Hope, Hilary Hahn, Vadim Gluzman, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin; cellists Alisa Weilerstein, Gautier Capuçon, Alban Gerhardt, David Finckel; violists Kim Kashkashian, Nobuko Imai, and Lawrence Power, and many others.

Auerbach is equally prolific in literature and the visual arts. She incorporates these forms into her professional creative process, often simultaneously expressing ideas visually, in words, and through music. She has published three books of poetry in Russian, and her first English-language book, Excess of Being – in which she explores the rare form of aphorisms. Her next book, an illustrated work for children, A is for Oboe, published by Penguin Random House, won Audiofile Best Audiobook 2022. She is the recipient of the 2021 Marsh Hawk Press – Robert Creely Memorial Award for her English poetry manuscript “Morning Music.

Auerbach has been drawing and painting all her life as part of her creative process. Her visual art is exhibited regularly, included in private collections, and represented by leading galleries.

Lera Auerbach holds multiple degrees from the Juilliard School in New York and the Hannover University of Music, Drama, and Media in Germany. Her teachers include Milton Babbitt, Rosalyn Tureck, Joseph Kalichstein, and Einar Steen-Nøkleberg.  The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, selected her in 2007 as a Young Global Leader, and since 2014, she has served as a Cultural Leader.  Boosey and Hawkes / Sikorski publish her music, and recordings are available on ECM, Deutsche Grammophon, Nonesuch, Sony Classical, Alpha Classics, BIS, Cedille, and many other labels.