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.

Keri-Lynn Wilson is the founder and Music Director of the highly regarded Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, formed in response to the Russian invasion and which has toured major cities and festivals in Europe and the United States over the past three summers. As a staunch supporter of Ukrainian liberty, Ms. Wilson performed the Verdi Requiem at the Lviv Opera House in February 2023 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the invasion and she has returned to Ukraine on numerous occasions since then to lead performances in solidarity. 

Ms. Wilson created a new performance version of the “Ode to Joy” in Ukrainian for the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s Beethoven Ninth Freedom Tour last summer. In this version, “Joy” is changed to “Slava,” the Ukrainian word for “Glory,” the rallying cry for Ukrainian victory. The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s recording of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony was released by Deutsche Grammophon to commemorate the second anniversary of the invasion.

Most recently, Ms. Wilson was appointed Music Director of the Kyiv Camerata, Ukraine’s leading chamber orchestra. Ms. Wilson will be leading the Kyiv Camerata in concerts both inside and outside of Ukraine in the 2024/25 season.

Ms. Wilson’s career as a conductor of opera and symphonic music includes many of the world’s leading opera houses and symphony orchestras. Among the opera companies she has conducted in recent seasons are the Royal Opera House, Paris Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera. Orchestras she has conducted recently include the NHK Symphony, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz.

Highlights of Ms. Wilson’s 2024/25 season include her debut at the Staatsoper Berlin, conducting Turandot, as well as return engagements with the Canadian Opera Company to conduct Madama Butterfly, the Deutsche Oper Berlin to conduct Salome, and the Metropolitan Opera to conduct Pique Dame. She makes her debut with the New York Philharmonic in December, conducting Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. Ms. Wilson will also be conducting a Puccini Gala concert tour of Spanish opera houses with soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and tenor Piotr Beczala at Grand Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, Teatro de la Maestranza, Teatro Real de Madrid and Les Arts Valencia. This season, she also conducts the Orquestra del Teatro Colon in a performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, as well as concert programs with the Havana Lyceum Orchestra at Mozartwoche in Salzburg, the Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est, and the MDR Sinfonieorchester. 

Over a rich and varied career, Ms. Wilson has conducted, amongst many other orchestras, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Wiener Kammerorchester, the Hessische StaatsorchesterWiesbaden, the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini in Parma, the Wrocław Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, the Prague Philharmonia, the RAI Symphony Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestre national d'Ile de France, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine, Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen, Toronto Symphony and l’Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal.

Ms. Wilson’s career operatic highlights include Carmen, La Bohème and La Traviata  at the Royal Ballet and Opera House Covent Garden; Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata at the Wiener Staatsoper, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the Metropolitan Opera, Salome at Houston Grand Opera La Traviata, Madama Butterfly and Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Stolen Happiness at the Liviv National Opera, Madama Butterfly at the Deutsche Oper, Cendrillon at Opéra national de Paris, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and La Traviata at the Opernhaus Zürich, Don Carlo, Iolanta, Manon Lescaut, Carmen, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West, Jenufa and Aïda at the English National Opera, Rusalka at the Czech National Opera, Rigoletto at the Norwegian National Opera, Der Fliegende Holländer, Carmina Burana, Boris Godunov, and Carmen at the Polish National Opera, Faust at the Washington National Opera, Pique Dame and Tosca at the Latvian National Opera and Madama Butterfly at the Canadian Opera Company. She was the first female conductor to lead an opera at: the Arena di Verona, where she conducted Tosca and Madama Butterfly; the New National Theatre (NNT) Tokyo, where she led Madama Butterfly; and the Opera di Roma, where she conducted Aïda.

Of partial Ukrainian descent, Ms. Wilson was raised in Winnipeg, Canada, home of North America’s most concentrated Ukrainian population, where she studied flute, piano, and violin from an early age. While still a student at Juilliard, she assisted Claudio Abbado at the Salzburg Festival, and won a fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center. Upon graduating from Juilliard with a masters both in flute and conducting, she was named the Associate Conductor at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

On August 24th, Ukrainian Independence Day, Ms. Wilson was awarded the Order of Princess Olga by President Zelensky for her contributions to Ukrainian culture. 

Augustin Hadelich is one of the great violinists of our time. From Bach to Paganini, from Brahms to Bartók to Adès, he has mastered a wide-ranging and adventurous repertoire. He is often referred to by colleagues as a musician's musician. Named Musical America’s 2018 "Instrumentalist of the Year", he is consistently cited worldwide for his phenomenal technique, soulful approach, and insightful interpretations.

Highlights of Augustin Hadelich’s 2020/21 season include appearances with the Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Dallas, Milwaukee, North Carolina and Seattle symphony orchestras, as well as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, WDR radio orchestra Cologne, Philharmonia Zürich, Dresden Philharmonic, ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, Danish National Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Orchestra, and Elbphilharmonie Orchestra Hamburg, where he was named Associate Artist starting with the 2019/20 season.

(May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of music’s best-loved composers. His 1812 Overture is a fixture at Fourth of July celebrations around the United States, and his ballet The Nutcracker is the most performed ballet in the world (not to mention being a Christmas-music standard).

Formal music education came late to Russia. In fact, Tchaikovsky was part of the first graduating class of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1865. He went on to teach music at the Moscow Conservatory. He is famous for his symphonies, concertos, operas, and chamber works. His ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker have all been portrayed in animated feature films, adding to his popularity.

Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, near Ekaterinoslav, on 23 April 1891 and received his first musical training from his pianist mother. His first composition was written at the age of seven, and for a while he studied privately with Reinhold Glière before entering the St Peterburg Conservatoire at the age of thirteen. His teachers there were Anna Essipova (piano), Anatol Liadov (harmony and counterpoint), Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (orchestration) and Nikolai Tcherepnin (conducting). He was outstanding both as a pianist and as a composer, and he graduated from the Conservatoire in 1914 excelling in both capacities, as soloist in his own First Piano Concerto – the modernity of which disconcerted the more conservative of the examiners, although it won him the Rubinstein Prize.

That same year Prokofiev travelled to London, where Russian music was very fashionable: Chaliapin and Diaghilev were both active, but initial attempts to persuade Diaghilev to mount Prokofiev opera The Gambler were unsuccessful. Prokofiev returned to Russia and wrote two ballets for Diaghilev, Ala and Lolly(which Diaghilev refused) and Chout (intended as a replacement); other works from this period include the perennially popular Classical Symphony, Prokofiev’s First, and Violin Concerto No.1 – he had found his mature style very quickly.

The turmoil of the Revolution (on which Prokofiev seems to have looked upon with some favour – though he later admitted he hardly realised what was at stake) drove him from Russia and early in 1918 he made his way to America; his stay in the west was to last for seventeen years. In the early 1920s he married the Spanish-born singer, Lina Llubera, and established himself in Paris, composing between international tours as a pianist. The works that emerged – the operas The Love of Three Oranges (1919) and The Fiery Angel (1919–27), the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies (1924–25, 1928, 1929–30), the ballets Pas d’Acier (1925–26) and The Prodigal Son (1928–29) – showed that his style could embrace an enormous range of expression: from a childlike lyricism via fantastic whimsy and motoric rhythms to an angular expressionism – and Prokofiev was always an entirely natural melodist.

In spite of a hugely successful visit to the Soviet Union in 1927, coinciding with a well-received production of The Love of Three Oranges, Prokofiev returned to the West once more, to his usual round of concertising and composing, writing and playing the last of his cycle of five piano concertos.

In 1936 Prokofiev took the fateful decision to return to the Soviet Union – ‘like a chicken to the soup’, in the words of Dmitri Shostakovich. With his initial sympathy for the goals of Soviet society, he felt that the composer ought to offer something directly relevant to the people, and he cast around for suitably Soviet subjects. Although his massive Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution was rejected by a committee of Soviet censors, Prokofiev enjoyed considerable success as a composer of film scores (Stalin’s preferred art-form) and some of his best-known music first appeared for this medium: Lieutenant Kijé (1934) and the cantata Alexander Nevsky (1938–39), refashioned from his score for Eisenstein’s epic. For a few years he found renewed favour – with a 1940 staging of his now-classic ballet Romeo and Juliet, completed four years earlier – but in February 1948 his career came to a crashing halt when the ‘Zhdanovshchina’ that heralded a tightening of state control over cultural affairs condemned him, Shostakovich and several others as ‘formalists’.

Prokofiev had suffered severe concussion in a fall in 1945, with permanent effects on his health, and his precarious physical condition combined with political disfavour to make his last years unhappy ones, despite the championship of some courageous young musicians, Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter among them. Although he continued to compose right up to his death, he was denied one final satisfaction: his death, on 5 March 1953, occurred only hours before that of Stalin.

Sergei Prokofiev is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes

Mykola Vytaliyovych Lysenko (1842-1912), born in the village of Hryhorivka, is celebrated as a foundational figure in Ukrainian music. He pursued his musical education in Kiev and later in Leipzig, where he honed his skills in piano and music theory. Lysenko's passion for Ukrainian culture led him to collect and preserve traditional folksongs, which became a cornerstone of his compositional style.

As a composer, Lysenko is best known for his operas which reflect the rich tapestry of Ukrainian folklore and history. His works often incorporate nationalist themes, showcasing the beauty and depth of Ukrainian identity through music. Lysenko's contributions extended beyond composition; he was also a conductor and educator, playing a vital role in the establishment of a Ukrainian School of Music.

Lysenko's legacy endures as a symbol of the Ukrainian cultural revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His dedication to promoting Ukrainian music and heritage has inspired generations of musicians and composers. Lysenko’s influence continues to resonate in the world of music, making him a revered figure in Ukrainian history.