- Riccardo Chailly
Riccardo Chailly (born February 20, 1953) is an Italian conductor. He started his career as an opera conductor and gradually extended his repertoire to encompass symphonic music
- Maxim Vengerov
Maxim Vengerov (born August 20, 1974 in Novosibirsk) is a Russian violinist virtuoso of Jewish origin. Vengerov was five when he received his first violin lessons from Galina Turtschaninova and later at the Royal Academy of Music in London (Junior Department). He later studied with the legendary violin teacher Zakhar Bron and was still only ten when he won the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland. Recital engagements in Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg) followed, …
- Yan Pascal Tortelier
Yan Pascal Tortelier (born April 19, 1947) is an internationally renowned French conductor and is the son of the late cellist Paul Tortelier. Born in Paris, he has worked and recorded extensively with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester - for whom he was Principal Conductor from 1992 to 2003. He also made an acclaimed recording of French music with the cellist Julian Lloyd Webber which included the cello concertos of Saint-Saens and Honegger for Universal Classics.
- Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop's first performance as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on 27 September was recently featured on NBC's Today Show. The program included Adams, Fearful Symmetries and Mahler's Symphony No. 5. Click here to visit the MSNBC site - to view the programme, enter 'Marin Alsop' under Find Film search box.
- Barry Wordsworth
Barry Wordsworth (born 20 February 1948, Worcester Park, Surrey, England) is a British conductor. He is currently music director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. In October 2006 he became Conductor Laureate of the BBC Concert Orchestra, having been Principal Conductor since 1989. In 2007, he began his second tenure as Music Director of the Royal Ballet, who are based at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
- Willem Mengelberg
Joseph Willem Mengelberg (28 March 1871 - 22 March 1951) was a Dutch conductor. Mengelberg was born fourth of sixteen children to German born parents in Utrecht, Netherlands. He studied in the Cologne conservatory, including piano and composition. When he lived in Lucerne, Switzerland in his early twenties, he was conductor of an orchestra and a choir, directed a music school, taught piano lessons and continued to compose.
- Frans Brüggen
Frans Brüggen is a Dutch conductor and recorder player. He was born in Amsterdam and studied recorder and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. He also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1955, at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He has had a brilliant career as a soloist, as well as founding the Orchestra of the 18th Century in 1981. He has also conducted many major European orchestras, …
- Nicholas McGegan
Nicholas McGegan is a British harpsichordist, flutist, conductor and early music expert. Educated at Cambridge and Oxford universities, McGegan participated in some of the earliest authentic-performance recordings during the 1970s as a baroque flutist, including Christopher Hogwood's seminal recordings of Mozart symphonies. McGegan has had long-term appointments with San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Germany's International Handel-Festival Göttingen, …
- Claus Peter Flor
Claus Peter Flor is a German conductor, born in Leipzig. He is currently principal guest conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, who performed Hector Berlioz's "Te Deum" at the Perth Concert Hall on the 1st and 2nd of December. For short periods, he has previously been principal guest conductor and artistic advisor to the Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich and music director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra.
- Anner Bylsma
Anner Bylsma (born Anner Bijlsma February 17 1934, The Hague) is a Dutch cellist who plays on both modern and authentic baroque style instruments. He took an interest in music from an early age. He studied with Carel van Boomkamp at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and won the "Prix d'excellence" in 1957. In 1959, he won first prize in the Pablo Casals Competition in Mexico.
- Hans Vonk
Hans Vonk (June 18, 1942 - August 29, 2004) was a Dutch conductor, born in Amsterdam, the son of Franciscus Cornelis Vonk and Wilhemina Vonk. His father was a violinist in the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and died when Vonk was age 3. Vonk studied music at the Amsterdam Conservatory and law at Amsterdam University. During this time, he made a living from gigs as a jazz pianist. He later studied conducting with Hermann Scherchen and Franco Ferrara.
- Jaap van Zweden
Jaap van Zweden (pronounced: "Yahp vahn ZWEH-dn") (born December 12, 1960 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland) is a Dutch conductor and violinist. From 1979, for sixteen years, Jaap van Zweden was first violinist and concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra In 1995 he started as a conductor. From 1996 to 2000 he was chief conductor of the "Orchestra of the East" in Enschede, in the Netherlands.
- Markus Stenz
Markus Stenz is a German conductor. He is currently General Music Director of the City of Cologne where he acts as chief conductor of the Cologne Opera and the Guerzenich Orchestra, also known as the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1998 to 2004 he was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. From 1994 to 1998 he was Principal Conductor of the London Sinfonietta. Markus has a particular interest in contemporary music, …
- Herman Krebbers
Herman Krebbers (born June 18 1923) is a Dutch violinist. Born in Hengelo, Overijssel, Krebbers studied in Amsterdam with Oskar Back. In 1943, the 19 year-old violinist debuted with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and eventually became the Orchestra's Concertmaster in 1962. In parallel he led a shining career as a soloist and a chamber musician. An accident in 1979 forced him to limit his soloist activities.
- Willem van Otterloo
Willem van Otterloo was a Dutch conductor and composer. Van Otterloo was born in Winterswijk, in The Netherlands, the son of William Frederik van Otterloo, a railway inspector, and his wife Anna Catharina Enderlé. He qualified to study medicine at the University of Utrecht but switched to studying cello and composition at the Amsterdam Conservatoire. While playing as a cellist in the Utrecht Stedelijk Orkest, …
- Jörgen van Rijen
Jörgen van Rijen is Principal Trombone (jointly with Bart Claessens) at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He is also a key member of young Dutch trombone ensemble, New Trombone Collective and Professor of Trombone at the Rotterdam Conservatorium where he studied as a teenager. Born in 1975, Jörgen started playing trombone aged 8 and from age 16 he learned at the conservatorium under educational director George Wiegel.
- Bright Sheng
Bright Sheng , born in Shanghai, China on 6 December 1955, started piano studies with his mother at the age of four. After graduating from high school during the Cultural Revolution he was one of the first students accepted by the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, where he earned his undergraduate degree in music composition. In 1982, he moved to New York, where he attended Queens College, CUNY, and Columbia University.
- Bruno Giuranna
Bruno Giuranna (born in Milan) is an Italian violist. He began his solo career in 1954 when he performed the world premiere of Giorgio Federico Ghedini's Concerto for Viola and Orchestra with Herbert von Karajan conducting. He has since performed regularly with leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and La Scala in Milan under conductors including Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir John Barbirolli, …
- Colin Carr
Colin Carr is a distinguished professor of cello currently at the Royal Academy of Music. Carr taught at the New England Conservatory in Boston for 16 years before taking up his current job at the Royal Academy of Music. In addition, he is also affiliated with the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He took second place in the international Rostropovich Cello Competition. Carr began playing at the age of five, and studied with Maurice Gendron.
- Paul van Kempen
Paul van Kempen (born 16 May 1893 in Zoeterwoude, Netherlands, died Amsterdam 8 December 1955) was a Dutch conductor. He studied at the Amsterdam conservatory from 1910 to 1913, including composition and conducting with Julius Roentgen and Bernard Zweers, as well as violin with Louis Zimmerman. From 1913, he was a second violinist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and one year later, was in the first violin section. After 1916, he began to make his career more in Germany, …
- Matthijs Vermeulen
Matthijs Vermeulen (born Mattheus Christianus Franciscus van der Meulen, was a Dutch composer and music journalist.
- Tugan Sokhiev
Tugan Sokhiev is an Ossetian conductor, trained in Saint Petersburg. Sokhiev was the music director for Welsh National Opera (WNO) from 2003-2004. It was reported that he was chosen after Vladimir Jurowski had declined an offer from WNO for the music directorship. Having come from Russia, he conducted the Russian opera "Eugene Onegin" with the company. He was also in charge of the Russian Series for W.N.O. which contained works by many famous Russian composers.
- Roger Bobo
Roger Bobo, is a noted American tuba virtuoso and teacher. He retired from active tuba performance in 2001 in order to devote his time to conducting and teaching. He gave what is reputed to be the first solo tuba recital in the history of Carnegie Hall. His solo and ensemble discography is extensive. Major orchestral appointments include: *Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, 1956–1962 (Eric Leinsdorf, cond.) *Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, …
- Steven Staryk
Steven (Sam) Staryk is a Canadian violin virtuoso. He is of Ukrainian descent. He went to Harbord Collegiate Institute when he was young. As a renown teacher, orchestral and chamber musician, and international soloist, he is considered to be the leading Canadian-born violinist of his generation. "The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada" describes him as “one of the most assured” technical players of the 20th century. In 1951, he was one of the symphony six, …
- Ilona Feher
Ilona Feher, Fehér Ilona, was one of the last representatives of the Central European Violin School whose greats included Joseph Joachim, Otakar Ševčík and Jenő Hubay. Feher studied with Jenő Hubay for six years at the Liszt Conservatory in Budapest. Other violin teachers of her early years were Joseph Bloch, Josef Smvilovitch (also a pupil of Jenő Hubay) and Imre Pogany. Between the two world wars she performed all over Europe, …
- Roger Norrington
The scholarly English conductor, Roger (Arthur Carver) Norrington , is a native of Oxford, England, where he came from a University family with strong musical connections. He was a talented boy soprano, studied the violin from the age of ten, and singing from seventeen, but his higher education was in English Literature at Cambridge University.
- Edo de Waart
Edo de Waart's appointment as the Sydney Symphony's Chief Conductor and Artistic Director a short time later has led to a period of greatness for the orchestra marked by many landmark events: the concert performances of Wagner's Das Rheingold, thrilling performances of Mahler's second and third symphonies, a strong commitment to new Australian music and the release of four CDs marking the beginning of a new recording agreement with the ABC Classics label.
- Yan Pascal Tortelier
“Yan Pascal Tortelier and Marek Janowski are both much respected and admired colleagues, and with them and the other (guest) conductors from whom we have major commitments Pittsburgh has a stellar podium array which would be envied anywhere in the world. I await next season with impatience!” Yan Pascal Tortelier comments, “Every time I work with a new orchestra it is always the same question, ‘will the Chemistry work, how will the musicians respond?’
- Hans Graf
Hans Graf , conductor Hans Graf is Music Director of the Houston Symphony, a post he assumed in September 2000. He completed his eighth and final season as music director of the Calgary Philharmonic in May 2003, and he concluded a six-year tenure as music director of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine in June 2004. Born in 1949 near Linz, Hans Graf studied violin and piano as a child.
- Colin Currie
Colin Currie , percussion Percussionist Colin Currie has established a unique reputation for his charismatic and virtuosic performances of works by today’s leading composers, and has already appeared with many of the world’s most important orchestras - the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra among them. Regularly commissioning and recording new works, he has made an inspirational and innovative contribution to the percussion repertoire.
- Simon Trpceski
Simon made his debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this season and has been re-invited for September 2007 with Maazel. His debut with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra also resulted in an immediate re-invitation to play Rachmaninov’s Paganini Variations with Ashkenazy. He made his debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in May and last summer he made a very successful debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl.
- Luis Segui
Luis's Top Five:
- Alexander Kerr
Alexander Kerr , professor of violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and former Concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, will take on the newly created position of Principal Guest Concertmaster of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2007.
- Mary Hubbell
Mary Hubbell grew up in Spartanburg, SC and received her B.A. in Music from Boston College in 1997. After working and performing in the Boston area, she earned her Master Degree in Singing from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2002 and her First Phase Degree in Classical Singing from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 2006.
- Donald Blakeslee
Donald Blakeslee Donald Blakeslee , principal tuba of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the Netherlands, died on Friday March 4, 2004. Blakeslee, who was 64 years old, died from liver cancer. Donald Blakeslee was born in 1940 in New Haven, Connecticut (USA) and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (USA) and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Berlin (Germany).
- Wouter Steijn
- Percussionist Colin Currie
Percussionist Colin Currie has established an unique reputation for his charismatic and virtuosic performances of works by today's leading composers, and has already appeared with many of the world's most important orchestras - the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra among them. Regularly commissioning and recording new works, he has made an inspirational and innovative contribution to percussion repertoire.
- Joel Fried
- Cho-Liang Lin Music
LIN, CHO-LIANG (b 1960 ) Cho-Liang Lin is a violinist whose career has spanned the globe for 27 years. He was born in Taiwan in 1960 and began playing the violin at the age of five. He went on to study in Sydney and New York City where he was a student of Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School.
- Rudolf Koelman
Professor Rudolf Koelman (Switzerland / the Netherlands), was born in Amsterdam in 1959. At the age of seven he received his first violin lessons from Jan Bor. In 1972 he began an extensive study of the violin under Herman Krebbers at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. From 1978 to 1981 he was one of Jascha Heifetz' last pupils at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Until 1999 he was first leader of the "Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra" in Amsterdam.