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.

A versatile musician with a commanding grasp of early repertoire, Mathieu Lussier is increasingly in demand as a guest conductor in Canada and abroad. Appointed by Les Violons du Roy as Conductor-in-Residence in 2012, and Associate Conductor in 2014, Lussier has led the orchestra in numerous programs both in Quebec, and on tour in greater Canada, the United States and Mexico. Previous appointments include Artistic Director of the Lamèque International Baroque Music Festival. In 2014, Lussier was awarded Canada Art Council’s prestigious Jean-Marie Beaudet Award in Orchestra Conducting.

OLIVER BOEKHOORN, oboeIVAR BERIX, clarinetRAAF HEKKEMA, saxophoneJELTE ALTHUIS, bass clarinetALBAN WESLY, bassoon 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.”

Founder and conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini’s early music ensemble Concerto Italiano came into existence in 1984. Its birth coincides with that of the revival of early music in Italy and is, in no small part, responsible for it. Monteverdi, Bach and Vivaldi are the main composers which have inspired the group in honoring an appreciation of the language of Baroque music, making a new aesthetic and musical rhetoric available to a fresh audience.  After several decades the recordings of Concerto Italiano are still considered by critics and public alike to be the definitive standards of the Baroque revival and style.

Russian-American bass Nikita Storojev’s international career has taken him to the world's major opera houses, great concert halls and international festivals in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Florence, London, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Vienna. He has over two dozen commercial recordings and five DVDs, under the batons of such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mariss Jansons, Neeme Järvi, John Nelson, Sir John Pritchard, and Mstislav Rostropovich. He has been called "simply perfect" by Paris’ Diapason.