Recently appointed Chief Conductor and Music Advisor of the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit regularly collaborates with the world's pre-eminent orchestras and soloists.

Renowned for polished and idiomatic interpretations of an eclectic array of musical styles and since his debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1980, Charles Dutoit has been invited each season to conduct the other major orchestras of the United States, including those of Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Pittsburgh.

He has also performed regularly with all the great orchestras of Europe, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra as well as with all the London orchestras, the major orchestras of Japan, South America and Australia.

Charles Dutoit has recorded extensively for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips, CBS, Erato among other labels with American, European and Japanese orchestras. His more than 170 recordings, half of them with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, have garnered over 40 awards and distinctions around the world.

For 25 years (1977 to 2002) Charles Dutoit was Artistic Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, a dynamic musical partnership recognized the world over.

He has also been closely associated with the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1990 as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestra's summer festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York and he led the Orchestra in a series of distinctive recordings.

From 1991 to 2001, Charles Dutoit was Music Director of the Orchestre National de France with which he made a number of critically lauded recordings, and toured extensively on the five continents. In 1998, he was appointed Music Director of the NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo) with which he has toured Europe, the United States, China and Southeast Asia and is today Music Director Emeritus of the Orchestra.

When still in his early 20's, Charles Dutoit was invited by Von Karajan to lead the Vienna State Opera. He has since conducted regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, New York and the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. He also led a highly acclaimed new production of Berlioz's masterpiece Les Troyens at the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

In 2003, he began a series of Wagner operas - Der fliegende Hollander and the complete Ring Cycle - at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

Artistic Director for three seasons of the Sapporo Pacific Music Festival, Charles Dutoit is presently Artistic Director of the Miyazaki International Music Festival in Japan as well as Artistic Director of the Canton International Summer Music Academy (CISMA) in Guangzhou (Canton), China which he founded in 2005.

Charles Dutoit also participated in a series of educational documentary films entitled Cities of Music produced by the NHK Television of Tokyo and which features ten musical capitals of the world.

In 1991, Charles Dutoit was made Honorary Citizen of the City of Philadelphia. In 1995, the government of Quebec named him Grand Officier de l'Ordre national du Quebec and in 1996, he was invested as Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. He is the recipient of two awards by the Canadian Conference of the Arts and in 1998, Charles Dutoit was invested as Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada, the country's highest award of merit whose other honorary recipients include John Kenneth Galbraith, James Hillier, Nelson Mandela, The Queen Mother, Vaclav Havel and Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Charles Dutoit was born in Lausanne, Switzerland and his extensive musical training included history of music, composition, violin, viola, piano and percussion at the conservatoires of Geneva, Siena, Venice and Boston. A globetrotter motivated by his passion for history and archaeology, political science, art and architecture, Charles Dutoit has traveled in all 195 nations of the world. He maintains residences in Switzerland, Paris, Montreal, Buenos Aires and Tokyo.

Taiwanese-American violinist Cho-Liang Lin is lauded the world over for the eloquence of his playing and for the superb musicianship that marks his performances. Renowned for appearances as a soloist with major orchestras, he is also frequently heard in recital and in chamber music. Musical America named Mr. Lin its Instrumentalist of the Year in 2000.

Mr. Lin's recent and upcoming concerts reflect his wide-ranging musical activities. Performing on several continents, he appears as soloist with orchestras in Norway, Finland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada and the United States. Apart from conventional repertoire, Mr. Lin continues his advocacy for contemporary music by presenting the world premiere of Taiwanese composer Gordon Chin's Double Concerto with cellist Felix Fan with the San Diego Symphony conducted by Jahja Ling as well as Chinese composer Bright Sheng's Three Fantasies at the Library of Congress with pianist Andre-Michel Schub.

As Music Director of La Jolla Music Society's SummerFest, the Los Angeles Times stated that Mr. Lin "has put together another bracing and provocative series." In his capacity as music director, he has helped commission and premiere works by Chen Yi, Chick Corea, Philip Glass, John Harbison, Mark O'Connor, Esa-Pekka Salonen among others. As a solo artist, he has premiered concerti by Tan Dun, Joel Hoffman, Christopher Rouse, Elie Siegmeister, Bright Sheng, George Tsontakis, George Walker and Chen Yi.

 Cho-Liang Lin has recorded for Sony Classical, Decca, Ondine, Naxos and BIS. His albums have won such awards as Gramophone's Record of the Year, as well as two Grammy Award nominations. On Sony Classical, his discography includes standard violin repertoire such as concerti ranging from Mozart to Stravinsky as well as chamber music of Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and Ravel. For Decca, he recorded the Concerto for Violin and Guitar by Aaron Jay Kernis with Sharon Isbin, conductor HughWolff and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. For BIS, he recorded Chen Yi's concerto Folk Dance Suite. His recording of the concerto by Christopher Rouse on Ondine was recently named one of the best classical releases of 2004 by The New York Times. His most recent recording projects include Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Sejong and Anthony Newman and music of Austrian composer/conductor Georg Tintner with pianist Helen Huang, both released on Naxos.

“It's a state of grace, it's a state of ecstasy. It's wonderful. How else can I describe it? There is another level of awareness of the keys, the way I'm holding my hand, the sense of contact.”

Renowned pianist, conductor and teacher Leon Fleisher, now in his sixth decade before the public, started piano lessons in his native San Francisco at age four, and gave his first recital at eight. A year later he began studying with the great German pianist Artur Schnabel, and by 16, in 1944, made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. He was the first American to win the prestigious Queen Elisabeth of Belgium competition, in 1952. Fleisher's career was on a smooth upward trajectory for the next dozen years: he concertized all over the world with every major orchestra and conductor, gave recitals everywhere, and made numerous touchstone recordings with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra of the piano concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, as well as pieces by Grieg, Schumann, and Rachmaninov (all available on CD).

Fleisher was suddenly struck silent when two fingers of his right hand became immobile in 1965. Undergoing many treatments that gave only temporary relief, he was forced to "retire" when only 37 years old. This was the defining moment in his career until recently, when he began treatments that finally helped relieve the neurological affliction known as focal dystonia that had been plaguing him for more than half his life. For several years, Fleisher has been playing -infrequently- with both hands again, and has just made his first two-hand recording in 40 years, a sort of musical biography called Two Hands. Its repertoire ranges from J.S. Bach and Domenico Scarlatti via Chopin and Debussy to Franz Schubert's monumental final Piano Sonata in B flat Major [Vanguard Classics].

In the nearly 40 years since Leon Fleisher's keyboard career was so suddenly curtailed, he has followed two parallel careers -as conductor and teacher- while learning to play the extensive but limiting repertoire of compositions for piano left-hand. He began conducting in 1967, but never gave up the idea of playing with both hands again.

Mr. Fleisher's reputation as a conductor was quickly established when he founded the Theatre Chamber Players at the Kennedy Center in 1967 and became Music Director of the Annapolis Symphony in 1970. He made his New York conducting debut at the 1970 Mostly Mozart Festival and in 1973 became Associate Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony. He has appeared as guest conductor with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestras of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Montreal and Detroit, among others. He also had a regular association with the New Japan Philharmonic as its Principal Guest Conductor, leading the orchestra in a series of concerts each season, as well as with the Chamber Music Orchestra of Europe and the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Teaching has been a crucially important element in Leon Fleisher's life. As a revered pedagogue, he has held the Andrew W. Mellon Chair at the Peabody Conservatory of Music since 1959, and also serves on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. From 1986-97 he was Artistic Director of the Tanglewood Music Center. His teaching activities at the Aspen, Lucerne, Ravinia and Verbier festivals, among others, have brought him in contact with students from all over the world. He has also given master classes at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Paris Conservatory, the Ravel Academy at St. Jean de Luz, the Reina Sofia School in Madrid, the Mishkenot in Jerusalem and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

For several years, Fleisher has been playing with both hands again, and recently made his first two-hand recording in 40 years, the critically acclaimed Two Hands.  The same title was given a short documentary by Nathaniel Kahn nominated this year for an Academy Award.  In May 2007, his recording of the Brahms Piano Quintet with the Emerson Quartet was released to rave reviews and his recital and concerto appearances in recent years have re-affirmed his place among the legendary pianists and musicians of our time.  Forthcoming engagements include his annual appearances at Carnegie Hall; the Beethoven "Emperor" Concerto with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood and on subscription; a recital in the Lucerne Festival piano series, among many others.

In 2005, Fleisher was honored by the French government and was named to the rank of Commander in the French Order of Arts and Letters, the highest rank of its kind. In December, Mr. Fleisher will receive the Kennedy Center Honors Award for 2007. He and his wife - Katherine Jacobson - Fleisher - have opened their private life by regularly playing duos together for audiences around the world.

"Suddenly I realized that the most important thing in my life wasn't playing with my two hands: it was music," says the fifth-generation Beethoven pupil. His teacher, Schnabel, who left Germany for the United States in 1939, had been a pupil of Polish keyboard giant and pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky, who was a pupil of Carl Czerny, who studied with Ludwig van Beethoven. "Passion, not technique, is what I learned from Schnabel," Fleisher has said.

"In order to be able to make it across these last thirty or forty years, I've had to somehow de-emphasize the number of hands or the number of fingers and kind of go back to the concept of music as music - whether it be a single line for a wind instrument or a single line for one hand, or one hand sounding like two hands. In other words, the instrumentation becomes unimportant and it's the substance and the content that takes over. It seems less momentous in a sense - but more, an extension and a continuation. In a way, that denies, whatever glory and exaltation there is in this whole event - but perhaps that best describes what this is, 'Two Hands'.

Already recognized for his deeply musical interpretations and masterful technique, Kirill Gerstein was the First Prize winner at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein Piano Competition in Tel Aviv and has concertized in the intervening years in virtually all major international music centres.

Next season 2007/08, he'll appear with the Philadelphia Orchestra (Dutoit), San Francisco Symphony (Dudamel), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Petrenko), Munich Philharmonic and Filarmonica della Scala (Bychkov), SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg (Gielen), Dallas Symphony (Varga), Finnish Radio (Nezet-Seguin), and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (Maalki), and return engagements with the Houston and Baltimore Symphony Orchestras (Graf), Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne (Krivine) and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra (Alsop), among many others.

Gerstein will perform solo recitals throughout Europe, including at the famed Liszt Academy in Budapest and at Wigmore Hall in London. He will also continue his chamber music collaborations with Stephen Isserlis as well as the piano trio with Kolja Blacher and Clemens Hagen. The season will close with his Salzburg Festival debut in two projects with Andras Schiff.

Among his awards, Kirill Gerstein was chosen to receive a 2002 Gilmore Young Artist Award and was selected as Carnegie Hall's "Rising Star" for the season 2005/06.

Furthering his commitment and passion to educational, musical and intellectual exchange he accepted a professorship at the prestigious Stuttgart Musikhochschule in 2007.

Gerstein was born in 1979 in Voronezh, Russia where he attended one of the country's special music schools for gifted children. He won his first competition - the International Bach Competition in Gorzuw, Poland - at the age of 11 and over the next several years, attended jazz workshops after having taught himself to play jazz by listening to his parents' extensive record collection. It was while participating at a jazz festival in Poland that a faculty member of the Berklee College of Music in Boston noticed his precocious affinity for playing jazz piano. In 1993, following a subsequent meeting in St. Petersburg with the Vibraphonist Gary Burton, Kirill Gerstein attended Berklee's summer program and the following fall was invited to attend the college on a full scholarship. He accepted the offer and in May 1994 moved to Boston with his mother (his father was eventually allowed to join them) and at the age of 14 became the youngest college student in the school's history.

During his years at Berklee, he attended the Boston University summer program at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1996. It was following his second summer at Tanglewood that he decided that classical music would be his main focus. He moved to New York City to attend the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Solomon Mikowsky and earned both his Bachelor and Masters of Music degrees by the age of 20. Mr.Gerstein continued his studies in Madrid with the famed piano pedagogue Dmitri Bashkirov and in Budapest with Ferenc Rados.

Visit: http://www.kirillgerstein.com