Gregory Vajda continues to be one of the most highly regarded conductors on the international scene. He was called a “young titan” by the Montreal Gazette after conducting the Montreal Symphony in Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung. He has been resident conductor of the Oregon Symphony for over seven seasons. He currently serves as the music director of the Huntsville (AL) Symphony, and is principal conductor of the Hungarian Radio Symphony (MR Symphony Orchestra), for both of which he conducts annually. He has been artistic director and conductor of Music in the Mountains (CA) and in 2014 was named Artistic Advisor to the Armel Opera Festival. In the 2017-18 season he conducts the Hungarian premiere of Georgia Bottoms: A Comic Opera of the Modern South at the Liszt Academy, a “Midnight Concert” series with the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra (Hungary), guest conducts the Rutgers (New Jersey) Symphony, and tours China with the Budapest Symphony.

The celebrated Slovenian pianist Dubravka Tomsic enjoys “something of a cult status among pianophiles" (Gramophone Magazine), with performances that convey "heroic power and Olympian vision" (Los Angeles Times) as well as "splendor, drama, passion, poetry, and subtlety" (Boston Globe). The only protégé of legendary pianist Artur Rubinstein, who considered her "a perfect and marvelous pianist," she gave her first public recital at age five and later embarked on an international career that has taken her to five continents. Over the course of her career, Ms. Tomsic has been heard in recital at major halls in Munich, Berlin, Prague, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Madrid, Amsterdam, London and Rome, and at the international festivals of Dubrovnik, Vienna, Prague, Naples, Dresden, Paris, Mexico City, Joliette (Canada), Gilmore, Newport, Tanglewood, and Mostly Mozart (New York City). Equally in demand as a soloist with orchestras, she has appeared with the Vienna Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London, Czech Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Munich Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony, Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, Dresden Staatskapelle, Moscow State Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Mexico City Philharmonic, the symphonies of Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, and San Francisco, and the major orchestras of Australia.

Bernard Labadie has established himself worldwide as one of the preeminent conductors of the Baroque and Classical repertoire, a reputation closely tied to his work with Les Violons du Roy (for which he served as Music Director from its inception until 2014) and La Chapelle de Québec. With these two ensembles he has regularly toured Canada, the US and Europe, in major venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, The Barbican, The Concertgebouw, and the Salzburg Festival, among others. He begins a four-year term as Principal Conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in the 2018-19 season.

Celebrated not least for the invention of their original genre, the reed quintet, Calefax is known internationally for their virtuosic playing and their “pop” sensibility as they arrange, recompose and interpret music from eight centuries to suit their unique constellation. From early music to classical and jazz to world premières, in the hands of Calefax it all sounds fresh and new. The Amsterdam-based ensemble has received many prestigious awards, including the 1997 Philip Morris Arts Prize, the 2001 Kersjes van de Groenekan Prize, the 2005 VSCD Classical Music Award, and the 2012 German Junge Ohren Prize for the family musical show De Muziekfabriek. They perform frequently throughout Europe, as well as in Russia, China, India, Turkey, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, and the USA. The Times (UK) has called them “five extremely gifted Dutch gents who almost made the reed quintet seem the best musical format on the planet.”

Dubbed “a major artist” by the Miami Herald and a “quiet maverick” by the Daily Telegraph, pianist Alexander Korsantia has been praised for the “clarity of his technique, richly varied tone and dynamic phrasing” (Baltimore Sun), and a “piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist” (Calgary Sun). The Boston Globe found his interpretation of his signature piece, Pictures at an Exhibition, to be “a performance that could annihilate all others one has heard.” And the Birmingham Post wrote that “his intensely responsive reading was shot through with a vein of constant fantasy, whether musing or mercurial.” Ever since winning the Gold Medal at the Artur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition and the First Prize at the Sidney International Piano Competition, Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Gianandrea Noseda, Jansug Kakhidze, Valery Gergiev, and Paavo Järvi, with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, Kirov Orchestra, RAI Orchestra in Turin, The City of Birmingham Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, and Israel Philharmonic.