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Meigui Zhang is a Chinese soprano whose international career has developed significantly since being named a Prix Yves Paternot laureate in 2019. In recent seasons, she has appeared at major opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, singing roles such as Barbarina (Le nozze di Figaro), Oscar (Un ballo in maschera), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), and Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro). She returned to the Verbier Festival in 2024 as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro. Her recent and upcoming engagements also include projects with the Paris Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and a return to San Francisco Opera for the world premiere of Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s The Monkey King. Alongside her operatic work, she maintains an active international concert career across Europe, North America, and Asia
A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, Sandrine Piau was first discovered by William Christie and has since become one of today’s most captivating sopranos. Equally at home in Baroque and modern repertoire, she has sung leading roles at the Opéra de Paris, Salzburg Festival, Covent Garden, and La Scala. Her wide-ranging career includes performances with conductors such as Philippe Herreweghe, Raphaël Pichon, Emmanuelle Haïm, and Laurence Equilbey. A passionate recitalist, she appears with pianists David Kadouch and Alexandre Tharaud and has recorded numerous acclaimed albums for Alpha Classics. Her latest release, Quintette imaginaire with the Quatuor Psophos, explores the world of Schubert through voice and strings.
Maki Namekawa is a leading figure among today’s pianists, bringing to audiences’ attention contemporary music by international composers. As a soloist and a chamber musician equally at home in classical and repertoire of our time, she performs regularly at international venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center New York, Musikverein Vienna, Barbican Center and Cadogan Hall London, Citè de la musique Paris, Philharmonie de Paris, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, BOZAR Bruxelles, Suntory Hall and Sumida Toriphony Hall Tokyo, Salzburg Festival, Ars Electronica Festival, Musik-Biennale Berlin, Rheingau Musik Festival and Piano-Festival Ruhr.
Maki Namekawa records and performs frequently for major radio networks in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and USA. Orchestra engagements include Royal Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, Münchner Philharmoniker, Bamberger Symphoniker, Dresdner Philharmonie, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Filharmonie Brno, American Composers Orchestra, and Seattle Symphony.
In 2013, she performed the world premiere of the entire cycle of Philip Glass’ 20 etudes for piano solo at Perth International Arts Festival under the participation of Glass himself, followed by concerts around the world in the US, Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Poland, Germany and Japan. A double-CD of the complete Glass etudes has been released in 2014 by Orange Mountain Music, reaching number 1 of the iTunes Classic charts and receiving high praise in the categories “Performance” and “Recording” by BBC Music Magazine. In September 2017 Maki Namekawa presented the whole cycle of Glass etudes for the first time in Austria at the Ars Electronica Festival as a project „Pianographique“ with real time visualization by Cori O‘Lan.
In September 2018, Maki Namekawa released the piano version of Philip Glass’ soundtrack “MISHIMA – A Life in Four Chapters” that depicts the life and death of the japanese writer and political activist Yukio Mishima. The arrangement was especially crafted for her by Glass’ longterm musical director Michael Riesman and features her crystal-clear technique. The recording was awarded the prestigious “Pasticcio Prize” by ORF – Austrian National Radio Broadcast. In June 2019, her another recording Isang Yun | Sunrise Falling was awarded Pasticcio Prize again.
In 2019 Philip Glass composed his first Piano Sonata especially for Maki Namekawa. She premiered the Sonata on July 4th, 2019 at Piano-Festival Ruhr in Germany in the presence of the composer. This Piano Sonata was commissioned by the Piano-Festival Ruhr, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Ars Electronica Festival.
Together with her husband, the conductor Dennis Russell Davies, Maki Namekawa formed a piano duo in 2003 which regularly performs in leading venues in Europe and North America including the Piano Festival Ruhr, the Radialsystem in Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, the Ars Electronica Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Morgan Library and “Roulette” in New York City, the Philips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Other Minds Festival in California. Major works written for the Namekawa-Davies Duo include Philip Glass’ “Four Movements for Two Pianos”, “Chen Yi’s “China West Suite”, and Glass’ “Two Movements for Four Pianos“ (with Katia and Marielle Labèque) all commissioned by the Piano Festival Ruhr. In July 2017, Maki Namekawa, Dennis Russell Davies and Philip Glass received the Piano Festival Ruhr Award. In 2019 japanese composer Joe Hisaishi composed for the Namekawa-Davies Duo a work for 2 pianos and chamber orchestra “Variation 57”, premiered in Tokyo under the baton of the composer.
Maki Namekawa studied piano at Kunitachi Conservatory in Tokyo with Mikio Ikezawa and Henriette Puig-Roget. In 1994 she won the Leonid Kreutzer Prize. In 1995 she continued her studies with Werner Genuit and Kaya Han at Musikhochschule Karlsruhe, where she completed her diploma as a soloist with special distinction. She went on to perfect her artistry in Classical-Romantic repertoire with Edith Picht-Axenfeld, in contemporary music with Pierre-Laurent Aimard at Musikhochschule Köln, György Kurtág, Stefan Litwin and Florent Boffard.
With roots and upbringing spanning Yemen, Israel and the United States, Achinoam Nini aka Noa, is a singer, songwriter, poet, composer, percussionist, speaker, activist and mother of three children.
Together with her longstanding musical collaborator Gil Dor, accomplished musician and co-founder of the Rimon School of music, Noa has released 15 international albums and graced many of the world’s most important and prestigious stages like Carnegie Hall and the White House and has performed for three Popes. She has been mentored by Pat Metheny and Quincy Jones and shared the stage with legends such as Stevie Wonder, Andrea Bocelli and Sting.
In addition to her prolific musical activity, Noa is considered Israel’s most prominent cultural advocate of dialogue and co-existence, her “Voice of Peace”.
Among her many awards is Commander of Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, one of Italy’s highest honors, Pilgrim of Peace from The Franciscan order in Assisi (awarded in the past to Bill Gates and Mother Theresa), and the Christal Award from the World Economic Forum. Noa is Israel’s first ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and is active as board-member and public advocate of a score of Human Rights and Peace organizations in Israel and abroad.
Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately has been highly visible in Britain since being designated a BBC New Generation Artist from 2013 to 2015. Unusually versatile, she has performed opera, choral music, and lieder, and her repertory ranges from Gilbert and Sullivan to contemporary works.
Born Catherine Whately in London in 1983, she was the daughter of actor Kevin Whately. She appeared on television as the daughter of his onscreen character in the series Auf Wiedersehen. Whately was raised partly in northern England and attended Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. There, she appeared as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She went on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and then the Royal College of Music International School. After winning several significant prizes, she was admitted to the Verbier Festival Academy, appearing there as Cherubino in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. These successes led to her designation as a BBC New Generation Artist in 2013 and to the chance to record her debut album, the song recital This Other Eden, on the Champs Hill label.
Since then, Whately has been a familiar figure on operatic stages, and not only in Britain. She appeared as Isabelle in Bernard Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights at L’Opéra National de Lorraine in France. At the Royal Opera House in London, she appeared as Mother/Other Mother in the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Coraline, and she has been noted for championing contemporary works. At the Three Choirs Festival, she was heard in a new work by Sally Beamish, and she commissioned a song cycle from composer Jonathan Dove. Whately has made several more recordings on Champs Hill, and in 2019, she joined baritone Roderick Williams on The Song of Love, a collection of little-known material by Ralph Vaughan Williams. She remained active through the COVID-19 pandemic, appearing on the 2021 Chandos release The Harmonious Echo: Songs of Sir Arthur Sullivan and on Signum Classics’ The Complete Songs of Fauré, Vol. 4. In 2023, she issued the solo recital Befreit: A Soul Surrendered on Chandos. Whately is the co-founder of the charity SWAP’ra (Supporting Women and Parents in Opera).
Biography by James Manheim
Ian Sullivan is the Principal Timpanist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. He is also the timpanist of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, The Knights, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and at the Tanglewood Music Center. He has appeared as guest principal timpanist with the New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra in Kuala Lumpur. He has appeared on numerous occasions at such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Avery Fisher/David Geffen Hall, Alice Tully Hall and Seiji Ozawa Hall, playing with various orchestras and ensembles.
He has spent summers playing in Festival Orchestras in Verbier (Switzerland), Tanglewood Music Center, Pacific Music Festival (Japan) and the Aspen Music Festival. Ian is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy and holds a BM from the University of Michigan and a MM from the Juilliard School. Ian spent 2012-2014 as a member of Ensemble ACJW and continues to work as a teaching artist and advisor for Carnegie Hall.
As an educator he has given masterclasses at The Juilliard School, NYU, and SUNY Purchase and is currently Associate Faculty at Columbia University and Rutgers University.