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Zubin Mehta was born in 1936 in Bombay and received his first musical education under his father’s Mehli Mehta’s guidance who was a noted concert violinist and the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. After a short period of pre-medical studies in Bombay, he left for Vienna in 1954 where he eventually entered the conducting programme under Hans Swarowsky at the Akademie für Musik. Zubin Mehta won the Liverpool International Conducting Competition in 1958 and was also a prize-winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood. By 1961 he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras and has recently celebrated 50 years of musical collaboration with all three ensembles.
Zubin Mehta was Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and also assumed the Music Directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in 1962, a post he retained until 1978.
In October 2019 he celebrated his farewell with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra to which he has served for 50 years. On this occasion he was named Music Director Emeritus of the IPO.
In 1978 he took over the post as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic commencing a tenure lasting 13 years, the longest in the orchestra’s history. From 1985 to 2017 he has been chief conductor of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence.
Zubin Mehta made his debut as an opera conductor with Tosca in Montreal in 1963. Since then he has conducted at the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Vienna State Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala Milano, and the opera houses of Chicago and Florence as well as at the Salzburg Festival. Between 1998 and 2006 he was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. In October 2006 he opened the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia and was the President of the annual Festival del Mediterrani in Valencia until June 2014 where he conducted the celebrated Ring cycle with the Fura del Baus in coproduction with the Florence opera house. Other Ring cycles were completed at the Chicago Opera and the Bavarian State Opera.
Zubin Mehta’s list of awards and honours is extensive and includes the
“Nikisch-Ring” bequeathed to him by Karl Böhm. He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997, of the Bavarian State Opera in 2006 and of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien in 2007. The title of “Honorary Conductor” was bestowed to him by the following orchestras: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (2001), Munich Philharmonic Orchestra (2004), Los Angeles Philharmonic (2006), Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2006), Staatskapelle Berlin (2014) and Bavarian State Orchestra (2006), with whom he performed in Srinagar, Kashmir in September 2013. In 2016 the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples appointed Zubin Mehta as Honorary Music Director and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic honoured him in 2019 as Conductor Emeritus. In February 2019 the Berlin Philharmonic appointed him their Honorary Conductor. A particular honor was made to him in 2022 when the new concert hall of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence was named after him.
In October 2008 Zubin Mehta was honoured by the Japanese Imperial Family with the “Praemium Imperiale”. In March 2011 Zubin Mehta received a special distinction, in getting a star on the Hollywood Boulevard. The Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany was bestowed to him in July 2012. The Indian Government honoured him in September 2013 with the “Tagore Award for cultural harmony” which a year earlier was awarded to Ravi Shankar. The Australian Government named him Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia in 2022.
Zubin Mehta continues to support the discovery and furtherance of musical talents all over the world. Together with his brother Zarin he is a co-chairman of the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Bombay where more than 200 children are educated in Western Classical Music. The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv develops young talent in Israel and is closely related to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as is a new project of teaching young Arab Israelis in the cities of Shwaram and Nazareth with local teachers and members of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
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.
Alongside her rich and diverse career as a cellist, Ruth Phillips is internationally sought after as a performance coach and stringed instrument teacher, helping people who suffer from tension, stage fright or lack of focus overcome the physical and mental strains of the music profession. Phillips is a trained therapist, holding a master’s degree in Voice Movement Therapy. She studied yoga with Peter Blackaby for many years, has completed three modules of the Non-Violent-Communication training with Muriel Kalfala, and a meditation training with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield.
In her work she draws on these disciplines and her own musical experience, which includes not only modern and baroque cello but also African drumming, Indian and folk music, to create a stimulating, empathetic and, above all, safe environment in which to explore the elements that are holding musicians back from reaching their full potential.
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.