Carnegie Hall

The world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra strives to share the transformative power of music with the widest possible audience, and to create joy, connection, and excitement through music in the Philadelphia region, across the country, and around the world. Through innovative programming, robust education initiatives, a commitment to its diverse communities, and the embrace of digital outreach, the ensemble is creating an expansive future for classical music, and furthering the place of the arts in an open and democratic society. In June 2021, the orchestra and its home, the Kimmel Center, united to form The Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc., reimagining the power of the arts to bring joy, create community, and effect change.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin is currently in his 11th season with The Philadelphia Orchestra, serving as music and artistic director. His connection to the ensemble’s musicians has been praised by both concertgoers and critics, and he is embraced by the musicians of the orchestra, audiences, and the community.

The Philadelphia Orchestra takes great pride in its hometown, performing for the people of Philadelphia year-round, in Verizon Hall and community centers, in classrooms and hospitals, and over the airwaves and online. In response to the cancellation of concerts due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the orchestra launched the Digital Stage, providing access to high-quality online performances, keeping music alive at a time when it was needed most. It also inaugurated free offerings: HearTOGETHER, a podcast on racial and social justice, and creative equity and inclusion, through the lens of the world of orchestral music; and Our City, Your Orchestra, a series of digital performances that connects the orchestra with communities through music and dialogue while celebrating the diversity and vibrancy of the Philadelphia region.

The orchestra’s award-winning education and community initiatives engage more than 50,000 students, families, and community members of all ages through programs such as PlayINs; side-by-sides; PopUP concerts; Our City, Your Orchestra Live; School Concerts; the School Partnership Program and School Ensemble Program; and All City Orchestra Fellowships.

Through concerts, tours, residencies, and recordings, the orchestra is a global ambassador and one of our nation’s greatest exports. It performs annually at Carnegie Hall, the Mann Center, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival. The orchestra also has a rich touring history, having first performed outside Philadelphia in its earliest days. In 1973, it became the first American orchestra to perform in the People’s Republic of China, launching a five-decade commitment of people-to-people exchange.

Under Yannick’s leadership, the orchestra returned to recording with 12 celebrated releases on the Deutsche Grammophon label, including the Grammy Award–winning Florence Price Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3. The orchestra also reaches thousands of radio listeners with weekly broadcasts on WRTI-FM and SiriusXM. For more information, please visit philorch.org.

The first woman to serve as the head of a major orchestra in the United States, South America, Austria, and Britain, conductor Marin Alsop is recognized internationally for her innovative approach to programming and audience development, deep commitment to education, and advocating for music’s importance in the world. Currently chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, she leads the ensemble at Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein and on recordings, broadcasts, and international tours. As chief conductor of Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, she curates and conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s summer residencies, formalizing her long relationship with Ravinia, where she made her debut with that orchestra in 2002. Appointed in 2020 as the first music director of the National Orchestral Institute + Festival, a program of the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, she has launched a new academy for young conductors and conducts multiple concerts.

At the close of the 2020–2021 season, Ms. Alsop assumed the title of music director laureate and OrchKids founder of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where she continues to conduct the orchestra for three weeks each season. During her 14-year tenure as music director, she led the ensemble on its first European tour in 13 years, released multiple award-winning recordings, conducted more than two-dozen world premieres, and founded OrchKids, a groundbreaking music education program for Baltimore’s most disadvantaged youth. In 2019, after seven years as music director, she became conductor of honor of Brazil’s São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, with which she continues to undertake major projects each season, including its Carnegie Hall debut to celebrate 200 years of Brazilian independence. Deeply committed to new music, she was music director of California’s Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music for 25 years, over the course of which she led 174 premieres.

Ms. Alsop’s discography comprises more than 200 titles. Recent releases include a live account of Bernstein’s Candide with the London Symphony Orchestra, and a Hindemith collection that marks her first recording as chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Conductor, a documentary about her life, debuted at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.

Donald Nally collaborates with creative artists, leading orchestras, and art museums to make new works for choir that address social and environmental issues. He has commissioned more than 180 new choral works and, with The Crossing, has produced 29 recordings. He has collaborated with orchestras and institutions that include the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Park Avenue Armory; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Swedish Radio Choir; Latvian State Choir; Haarlem Choral Biennale; The Menil Collection in Houston; Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Lincoln Center; Mostly Mozart Festival; Cleveland Museum of Art, National Sawdust; Barnes Foundation; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series; Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the National Gallery in Washington, DC; International Contemporary Ensemble; American Composers Orchestra; Klockriketeatern at the Finnish National Opera; the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; Big Ears Festival in Knoxville; and the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana. He has been guest artist and teacher at Yale University, Duke University, Boston Conservatory of Music, the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, the University of Illinois, Colgate University, Notre Dame University, Western Michigan University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Chicago.

In addition to his work with The Crossing, Mr. Nally has been visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory and chorus master for the New York Philharmonic for world premieres of works by Julia Wolfe and David Lang. His 72-chapter series Rising w/ The Crossing, a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, gained national attention and was featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR’s Performance Today; it has been archived by the Library of Congress as a cultural artifact and an “important part of this collection and the historical record.”

Charlotte Blake Alston is an internationally acclaimed storyteller, narrator, and librettist and is The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Imasogie Storyteller, Narrator, and Host. She has appeared as host and narrator on the orchestra’s School and Family concerts since 1991 and has been the host of Sound All Around, the orchestra’s preschool concert series, since 1994. She has also appeared on each of the orchestra’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Tribute Concerts since 2003.

Committed to keeping alive African and African American oral traditions, Ms. Alston has performed on national and regional stages that include the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She has been a featured artist at the National Storytelling Festival and National Black Storytelling Festival and Conference, as well as at festivals in Ireland, Switzerland, South Africa, and Brazil. She has performed at Presidential inaugural festivities in Washington, DC, and the Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Children’s Inaugural Celebrations in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She was also one of two storytellers selected to present at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. She has been guest narrator for several orchestras, including The Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. During a 20-year association with Carnegie Hall, she was the featured pre-concert artist, host, and narrator on the Family, School, and Global Encounters concert series, and represented the Hall in Miyazaki, Japan. She has also performed as a touring artist for Lincoln Center Institute.

Ms. Alston has produced several commissioned works for orchestras and opera companies, including original narrative texts for Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade. Her honors include two honorary PhDs, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and the Circle of Excellence Award from the National Storytelling Association. She is the recipient of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Artist of the Year Award and the Zora Neale Hurston Award, the highest award bestowed by the National Association of Black Storytellers.

Soprano Meigui Zhang represents China in the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. In July, she makes her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood as Despina in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and in September she makes her Los Angeles Opera debut as Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Current season highlights include her role debut as Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice at San Francisco Opera, her Atlanta Opera debut as Zerlina, Mozart’s Requiem with the North Carolina Symphony, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with Bard College’s The Orchestra Now, and Bruckner’s Te Deum with the New Jersey Symphony.

Highlights of Ms. Zhang’s 2021–2022 season included Thibault in Verdi’s Don Carlos with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Barbarina in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, both at the Metropolitan Opera; and her San Francisco Opera debut as Dai Yu in Bright Sheng’s The Dream of the Red Chamber. As soloist, she performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 across China with the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts, Bach’s Coffee Cantata with Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival, and concerts with the Xi’an and Shenzhen symphony orchestras. Additional past highlights include Pamina in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Verbier Festival, Lucia in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia at Tianjin Grand Opera, and Marzelline in Beethoven’s Fidelio with the Harbin Symphony Orchestra.

Ms. Zhang was the Grand Prize winner of the 2019 Verbier Festival’s Prix Yves Paternot and a finalist in the 2019 Queen Sonja International Music Competition; in addition, she took second place at the 2020 Opera Index Vocal Competition and the Audience Prize at the 2020 Glyndebourne Opera Cup. While in the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, she made her Met debut as the Bloody Child in Verdi’s Macbeth. She also attended the Merola Opera Program, where she performed Anne Trulove in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and the Chautauqua Institute, where she was seen as Pamina. Ms. Zhang earned her master’s degree from the Mannes School of Music and her bachelor’s degree from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.

The Crossing is a Grammy-winning professional chamber choir dedicated to new music and committed to working with creative teams to make and record new, substantial works for choir. Many of its nearly 110 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. The Crossing collaborates with some of the world’s most accomplished ensembles and artists, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, the American Composers Orchestra, Network for New Music, Piffaro, Beth Morrison Projects, Allora & Calzadilla, Bang on a Can, Klockriketeatern, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. The choir collaborates with some of the world’s most prestigious venues and presenters and holds an annual residency at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center in Big Sky, Montana, where it is working on an extensive, multi-year project with composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison.

The Crossing has recently expanded its choral presentation to film, working with Four/Ten Media, in-house sound designer Paul Vazquez of Digital Mission Audio Services, visual artists Brett Snodgrass and Steven Bradshaw, and composers David Lang and Michael Gordon on live and animated versions of new and existing works. With a commitment to recording its commissions, The Crossing has issued 21 releases, winning three Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, and 2023) and eight Grammy nominations. Other recognitions include the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music, the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, three ASCAP awards for Adventurous Programming, and the Dale Warland Singers Commission Award from Chorus America.

The Crossing is under the direction of Donald Nally, who has also held distinguished tenures as chorus master for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Welsh National Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and the Chicago Bach Project, and for many seasons at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. He has been visiting resident artist at the Park Avenue Armory, as well as music director of Mr. Lang’s 1000-voice Crowd Out at Millennium Park in Chicago and 1000-voice Mile-Long Opera on the High Line in Manhattan. In spring 2023, Mr. Nally concludes a decade as the John W. Beattie Chair in Music and director of choral organizations at Northwestern University.