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Shchedrin first visited Verbier 25 years ago in 1997, when Maxim Vengerov and Antonio Pappano performed his new Violin Concerto. He has since then been an annual guest at the Festival with his late wife Maya Plissetskaya, and has over the years composed many new works from his modest chalet lent to him by one of the Friends of the Festival.
Rena Shereshevskaya is a graduate of the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory and a postgraduate of this institution, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), a laureate of the Ippolitov-Ivanov International Prize in Musical Education and an Honorary Professor of the Moscow Ippolitov-lvanov Musical and Pedagogical Institute. She taught at the Central Special Music School for Gifted Children at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory for 12 years before joining the Ippolitov-lvanov Music Institute as a professor of piano and head of a piano chair. In 1993 she was first invited as a guest professor to France, where she has been working ever since. At present she is a professor of piano at the Paris Alfred Cortot Superior Music School and at the Rueil-Malmaison Conservatory. She gives masterclasses all over the world (France, USA, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Monaco, China, amongst others) and serves as a member or head of jury at international piano competitions. Many of her students became prize-winners of major competitions, for example Rémi Geniet (2nd Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels, 2013), Lucas Debargue (4th Prize and the Special Prize of the Association of Music Critics at the 15th Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow, 2015), Alexandre Kantorow (1st Prize and the Grand Prix at the 16th Tchaikovsky Competition, Moscow, 2019). At the same time, Rena Shereshevskaya continues to play chamber music with internationally renowned musicians and in duo with her daughter Victoria, a mezzo-soprano. Moreover, she is the artistic director of a festival she conceived, Artistic Dynasties and Families.
Ruth Phillips is internationally recognised as a cellist, performance coach, and writer. Working at the intersection of music and mindfulness, she is a graduate of Mindfulness programmes with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield and draws on neuroscience, contemplative practice, somatic awareness, and four decades as a professional musician. Her coaching, mindfulness retreats for creatives, and The Breathing Bow community have become a refuge for performers seeking a more humane and heartfelt relationship with their art and craft.. With an approach described as “inspirational” and “innovative,” she has supported performers from leading chamber groups, conservatoires, festivals and orchestras in finding greater ease, confidence, and creative freedom both on and off stage. Cellist Steven Isserlis writes of her work: “I wish that more musical training started from those precepts.”
She is the author of the book Beauty at the Edge of Catastrophe, Cultivating Mindful Presence in Musical Performance. Jack Kornfield has called the book a “gift”, saying: “Dear musicians, you hold in your hands a beautiful offering that can enliven your embodied presence, and bring heart wisdom to your art.”
Gary Leboff is the UK’s leading Performance Psychologist. A unique figure in the arena of coaching, Leboff has devoted his life to helping people achieve their ambitions, creating a myriad of leading-edge tools and techniques, and transforming performance across the spheres of business, music and sport. He also works with young people and adults from all walks of life, across the world. A new breed of coach, his style is refreshingly direct, jargon free and results orientated, the result of which has been a track record of success that is second to none, helping clients to transcend their boundaries, transform their lives and realise their dreams.
Patrick Jeanneret is an international tax specialist. After working in Geneva and New York for Ernst & Young and then as a tax manager for the Reuters news agency’s HQ in Geneva, for which he travelled throughout Africa, Europe and the former USSR, he was hired as deputy director of the tax department at Nestlé headquarters, working with the United States, France and Japan. Since 2008, he has been working as an independent consultant for an international clientele of artists. Since 2011, Jeanneret is also a producer of movies, music videos and music. He has recently produced a CD of a duo of classical pianists, Oxy More and co-produced the last movie of Amos Gitai, Laila in Haifa, selected in competition at the Venice Film Festival of La Mostra in 2020.
American double bassist, educator and curator Mary Javian’s goal is to use music to create positive social change in communities. A graduate of Curtis Institute of Music, where she is now Chair of Career Studies, Javian studied with Harold Robinson. She has toured and has performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and other world-class ensembles, and performed recitals and given masterclasses in the US, Europe and Asia. Her current role at Curtis has seen her develop in herstudents the entrepreneurial and advocacy skills that 21st century musicians need, with many going on to start their own educational programmes, innovative ensembles and music festivals around the world. She also presents and consults widely to musical institutions around the world. She also presents and consults widely to musical institutions about social entrepreneurship and community-based work.
Canadian actor, movement specialist and director Alexis Milligan practices and teaches a diverse range of work from theatre and film to movement direction and puppetry. Among her acting credits are eight seasons with Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, with which Rosalind (As You Like It) and Beowulf earned her Merritt Award nominations. Her choreography and movement creation includes being Movement Director at the Shaw Festival, and movement and puppetry director for the National Theatre of Norway’s A Christmas Carol. Milligan’s passion project is her interdisciplinary performance company, Transitus Creative, specialising in Art Communication and public engagement through the arts. She sits on the steering committees for the Canadian Network of Imagination and Creativity, and for the Atlantic Centre for Creativity, and is a regular guest teacher at NYU Tisch School for the Performing Arts.
Praised by Il Corriere della Sera for “obtaining powerful and refined colors” (La Traviata) and by Seen and Heard International for “instilling drama and excitement in every note,” Vincenzo Milletarì is rapidly establishing himself among the leading conductors of his generation.
In the 2023/2024 season, he debuts with the CSO Orchestra in Ankara, returns to the Prague State Opera for Rigoletto, and conducts at the Opéra de Tours, Bergen Philharmonic, Royal Swedish Opera, Den Norske Opera Oslo, and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano. Since 2017, he has collaborated with prestigious opera companies like the Royal Danish Opera and Prague State Opera.
Equally adept in symphonic repertoire, he works frequently with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Filarmonica Toscanini, and Copenhagen Philharmonic.
Born in Taranto in 1990, Milletarì studied at the “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Milan and the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He has won numerous prizes, including the 10th “Arturo Toscanini” International Conducting Competition and the “Sir Georg Solti” conducting competition.
One of Ireland’s most successful musicians, Finghin Collins was born in Dublin in 1977 and, following initial lessons with his sister Mary, studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O’Conor and at the Geneva Conservatoire with Dominique Merlet. Winner of the RTÉ Musician of the Future Competition in 1994 and the Classical Category at the National Entertainment Awards in Ireland in 1998, he went on to take first prize at the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 1999. Since then he has continued to enjoy a flourishing international career that takes him all over Europe and the United States, as well to the Far East and Australia.
Collins has performed with such orchestras as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, garnering consistent praise from critics and public alike. Conductors with whom he has collaborated include Frans Brüggen, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Hans Graf, Emmanuel Krivine, Nicholas McGegan, Gianandrea Noseda, Sakari Oramo, Tadaaki Otaka, Heinrich Schiff, Vassily Sinaisky, Leonard Slatkin and Gábor Tákacs-Nagy. He has also given solo recitals in many of the world’s most prestigious halls and participates frequently in chamber music festivals with a variety of colleagues of international standing.
Since live concerts recommenced during the summer of 2021, Collins has continued t to perform a wide range of solo and concerto repertoire as well as chamber music in Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. These include performances at the Wigmore Hall, London, Zermatt Festival in Switzerland, Piano aux Jacobins in France and the world premiere of a new concerto by Jane O’Leary with the National Symphony Orchestra in Galway and Dublin.
Over the past two decades Collins has developed a close relationship with Claves Records in Switzerland, recording two double CDs of Schumann’s piano music (which won numerous awards including Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in 2006), followed by a recording of works for piano and orchestra by Charles V. Stanford with the RTÉ NSO / Kenneth Montgomery (Editor’s Choice, May 2011). In May 2013 RTÉ lyric fm launched his recording of four Mozart piano concertos directed from the keyboard with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. A Chopin recital CD was released in 2017, a co-production between RTÉ lyric fm and Claves Records, while in spring 2020 Claves released a recording of the Mozart Piano Quartets with Rosanne Philippens (violin), Máté Szücs (viola) and István Várdai (cello).
Finghin Collins makes a significant contribution to the musical landscape of his native Ireland, where he resides. Since 2013, he has been Artistic Director of Music for Galway, which among many other projects was tasked with presenting the major classical programme of Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture. The centrepiece of that programme, the cello festival CELLISSIMO, was delivered successfully online in March 2021. He is also the founding Artistic Director, since 2006, of the New Ross Piano Festival in Wexford as well as the founding co-Artistic Director, since 2019, of the International Master Course at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.
Collins was a member of the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland in 2021 and the Dublin International Piano Competition in 2022. He will chair the jury of the Clara Haskil Competition in 2023 and 2025.
In 2017, the National University of Ireland conferred on him an honorary Degree of Doctor of Music.
Of Michael Fabiano’s debut as Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera, The Sunday Times in London wrote: “I can’t think of a Lensky at Covent Garden who has held the audience so spellbound in 40 years of Onegin-going… a glorious debut.” The recipient of the 2014 Beverly Sills Artist Award and the 2014 Richard Tucker Award, Mr. Fabiano is the first singer to win both awards in the same year, and is considered one of the greatest tenors in the world today.
Mr. Fabiano is the recipient of Australia’s prestigious Helpmann Award in the “Best Male Performance in an Opera” category, for his portrayal of the title role in Gounod’s Faust with Opera Australia. He is a member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild Artists’ Council and one of the founders of ArtSmart, a non-profit organization that provides free voice and instrumental lessons to students in public schools in under-served neighborhoods within the U.S., and the Chief Strategy Officer for Resonance, a social commerce platform that