Celebrating Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month, we shine a spotlight on five guest artists who have been championing the works of Black composers throughout their careers.

We highlight two extraordinary pianists who return this summer: Michelle Cann, a leading interpreter of the music of composer Florence Price, and Stewart Goodyear, along with three guest conductors making their Festival debut: Jeri Lynne Johnson, Kedrick Armstrong and Kalena Bovell. Each conductor will be leading a Festival premiere of a work by a Black composer.

Lauded as “exquisite” by The Philadelphia Inquirer and “a pianist of sterling artistry” by Gramophone, Michelle Cann is one of the most sought-after artists of her generation. She has been recognized as a leading interpreter of the piano music of Florence Price and opened the Festival’s 2022 season with Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement, a rediscovered work that had been lost for 75 years. Cann won a GRAMMY Award in 2025 for Beyond the Years: Unpublished Songs of Florence Price, featuring 19 unpublished songs composed by Price, recorded with soprano Karen Slack who will also be featured in Festival 2026. Embracing a dual role as performer and pedagogue, Cann is frequently invited to teach master classes, give lecture demonstrations, and lead teaching residencies. In addition to showcasing her artistry on Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with the Grant Park Orchestra on July 15, she will lead a piano masterclass, working with Chicago-area music students and young professionals.

In 2007, twenty-nine-year-old Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear made his first appearance with the Grant Park Orchestra, receiving rave reviews from the Chicago Tribune on his performance of Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. Today, Goodyear is an accomplished concert pianist, improviser and composer and has been proclaimed "a phenomenon" by the Los Angeles Times and "one of the best pianists of his generation" by the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has performed with and has been commissioned by many of the major orchestras and chamber music organizations around the world. Goodyear's discography includes the complete sonatas and piano concertos of Beethoven, as well as concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Rachmaninov, an album of Ravel piano works and a recent release of Prokofiev’s Second and Third Piano Concertos. He returns to the Festival this summer to perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3, led by Giancarlo Guerrero on June 19 and 20.

Acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “a stunning, rhythmically vital conductor,” Jeri Lynne Johnson is known for performances that are both masterfully precise and deeply communicative. In 2005, she became the first African American woman to win an international conducting prize when she was awarded the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship. Since then, she has led many of the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies—including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Santa Fe Opera—often as the first African American woman to take the podium. In 2008, she founded the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in Philadelphia, an organization that has become a nationally recognized leader in building audiences for classical music. She makes her Festival debut on July 15, leading Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G featuring Michelle Cann, along with the Festival premiere of Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3.

Kedrick Armstrong was named Oakland Symphony’s new Music Director in 2024, where he embarked on a groundbreaking project to elevate the voices of seven Black American composers, cementing their legacies in the American canon, and reaching new, diverse audiences through storytelling and digital distribution. His advocacy for the preservation of minority voices is one reason why the Washington Post included him in their “22 for ’22: Composers to Watch”. Armstrong is an alum of Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion Freeman Conducting Fellow program, where he served as Assistant Conductor during the 2018-2019 season. In 2026, he will return to the Chicago Sinfonietta and make his conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and Springfield Symphony. He’ll make his Festival debut this summer, conducting George Gershwin’s An American in Paris, on a program that also includes the Festival premiere of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Sinfonietta No. 1. He’ll also conduct An Evening with Ben Folds and the Grant Park Orchestra.

With her distinctive voice as a maestra, speaker, and poet, Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell has been hailed by Channel 3 News (Connecticut) as “one of the brightest stars in classical music.” In 2024, she received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence—the highest honor awarded by the Sphinx Organization—and completed her tenure as a Taki Alsop Conducting Fellow. Bovell’s 2025–2026 season includes debuts with the Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, New World Symphony, Redlands Symphony, and Arcadiana Symphony, along with a homecoming appearance with the Hartford Symphony. She makes her Festival debut on June 24 in a program that includes the Festival premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto featuring Will Hagen and Peter Boyer’s Ellis Island: The Dream of America, which blends orchestral music and powerful visual projections to celebrate America 250.