9 Yuung Conductors to Perform on Monteux School & Music Festival's Winter Concerts Jan, 4 & 5 in NYC

William Cabison is a conductor and pianist currently serving as Assistant Conductor of the Los Robles Master Chorale in Oak Park, CA. In the previous season, he performed with Lesley Leighton in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Noon to Midnight Festival as guest supporting conductor in David Lang's crowd out. His previous positions while a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, include Assistant Conductor of uclaFLUX and Assistant Conductor of the UCLA Chorale. He was trained by orchestral and choral conductors, including Dean Anderson, Jerry Blackstone, Charles Bruffy, James Jordan, Maxim Kuzin, Sasha Mäkilä, Adrian McDonnell and Eugene Rogers. As a pianist, William received his B.A. Music cum laude from UCLA, where he studied with David Kaplan and Walter Ponce. And as a composer, the Los Robles Master Chorale has commissioned the premieres of William's compositions, which include Sympathy, Loam, and a new work in 2020. In 2016, his Moonrise was the winning piece in the Los Angeles Master Chorale Young Composers Contest, and was premiered by the LAMC Chamber Singers in Walt Disney Concert Hall with former Associate Conductor Lesley Leighton.

 

Danielle Garrett's current positions include conductor of the Philadelphia Sinfonia Players Youth Orchestra, Temple University adjunct instructor of the OWLchestra String Orchestra and ensemble librarian for the instrumental music department. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she earned her BS in Music Education from Chestnut Hill College, and her MM in String Pedagogy from Temple University. Garrett has studied violin under Booker Rowe of The Philadelphia Orchestra and the late Helen Kwalwasser of Temple University. In addition to her violin studies, Ms.Garrett has taken an advanced conducting course with Maestro Luis Biava and is coached and mentored by Maestro Gary White. During the 2018-19 season, Garrett was a conducting fellow with the Allentown Symphony. An active clinician and featured guest conductor at PMEA and BCMEA music festivals, Ms. Garrett has attended conducting workshops at The Juilliard School, Oberlin Conducting Institute, the Bard Conservatory Conducting Institute, New York Conducting Institute, and Smoky Mountain International Conducting Institute. 

 

Milan Milisavljevic, Principal Viola with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, also serves as conductor and founder of Music for the People, a New York-based ensemble dedicated to a new perspective and concert experience of classical music. As a soloist, he has appeared throughout the world with such orchestras as the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic, Aspen Sinfonia, Classical Tahoe, Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río and many others. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with members of the Guarneri and Mendelssohn String Quartets, as well as Joseph Kalichstein, Sergiu Luca, Cho-Liang Lin and many others. A member of the viola faculty at Mannes School of Music in New York, Milisavljevihas won prizes at competitions such as Lionel Tertis and Aspen Lower Strings and has performed at Marlboro, Cascade Head, Classical Tahoe, Agassiz and Grand Teton music festivals. His solo album,  Sonata-Song, for Delos Music, has received glowing reviews, with the recording of A. Khachaturian's solo sonata on the album hailed as "definitive". Former posts include serving as Assistant Principal Viola of The MET and serving as a former member of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Milan's teachers include Jutta Puchhammer, Atar Arad, James Dunham, Nobuko Imai and Samuel Rhodes. He plays a viola made by Joseph Curtin of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a Larsen Strings Artist.

Joseph Morag, acclaimed by The New York Times and others, has performed extensively as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral violinist. Joseph has studied conducting under Joshua Gersen at the New York Youth Symphony's Apprentice Conducting Program, with Victor Yampolsky at the Wintergreen Music Festival, and with Michael Jinbo at the Monteux Festival. As a violinist, Joseph has appeared as soloist and concertmaster with the Vancouver Symphony, Columbia University Orchestra, Empire Chamber Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, and National Orchestral Institute Festival Orchestra. Currently, Joseph plays with the Chelsea Symphony, Montclair Orchestra, and Symphonia. He is also pursuing a Master's degree in Music Technology at New York University.

Christina Morris is currently a third-year undergraduate student studying Music Performance on String Bass, Musical Studies with a concentration in Music Theory and Musical Theatre at the Crane School of Music. She first began studying conducting her senior year of high school under Maestro Harry Marenstein, the conductor of the Gemini Youth Symphony Orchestra. He let her conduct the ensemble that same year. After her freshman year of college, she studied conducting under Maestro Micheal Tilson Thomas as a conducting apprentice at the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. The following summer Morris conducted at the Miami Music Festival as a participant of their Conducting Institute. Ms. Morris has recently been accepted to the Tanglewood Music Festival as a participant of their Conducting Seminar.

 

Emily Schaad began her career on violin and viola, attending The Juilliard School and The Curtis Institute of Music. She holds an M.A. in Appalachian Studies from Appalachian State University and is a doctoral candidate in Music Education at Boston University. She has served as music director of Asheville Symphony Youth Orchestras and Greenville County Youth Orchestras, and as a founder and artistic director of Stringendo, Inc., a string school in the Hudson Valley. Ms. Schaad has taught elementary, middle, and high school strings and currently performs with Asheville and Greenville Symphonies.

 

Joe A. Wilkins is a tubist, composer and conductor. As a conductor, he has held apprentice and assistant positions with the Central Michigan University Symphony Orchestra, Concert Orchestra, and New Music Ensemble. Wilkins recently completed an internship with the Saginaw Bay Youth Orchestra (SBYO), which included an Assistant Conducting position, and will return in spring 2020 as a Brass Instructor. In addition, he has volunteered as a Substitute Conductor with chamber and community ensembles throughout Mid Michigan. As a tubist, Wilkins has won numerous performance awards, from being named the 2016 Michigan Youth Arts Festival Distinguished Music Scholar, to receiving the John Philip Sousa Band Award. In October of 2019, Joe published his flagship book, Fantasy Duets for Low Brass, featuring 13 etudes designed to introduce various concepts of chamber performance to the young low brass player. Mr. Wilkins will graduate from Central Michigan University in the spring of 2020 with a BA in Tuba Performance and plans to continue his education with a MA in Orchestral Conducting.

Matthew Woodard has appeared as conductor with the Windham Orchestra and has attended many summer festivals as both a performer and composer, including Greenwood Music Camp, Yellow Barn Young Artists Program, Bowdoin International Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, Kneisel Hall, and the Monteux School. As a soloist, Woodard has appeared with the Holyoke Civic Symphony, Windham Orchestra, Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, and The Orchestra Now of Bard College, as well as in recital at the Rockport Music Festival as part of their Education and Outreach series, which performance saw the premiere of his Violin Sonata. As a composer, Matthew's works have been performed at Bard College, the New England Conservatory and the Rivers School, as well as on the national radio and television program From the Top. Most recently, conductor Gerard Schwarz and the Bard Conservatory Orchestra premiered his Aurora, a one-movement work inspired by Melville's poem of the same name. Woodard completed a Master of Music Degree in Violin Performance at the Yale School of Music where he was a student of Syoko Aki. He earned a Bachelor of Music Degree from Bard Conservatory, where he studied violin with Laurie Smukler and composition with Joan Tower and George Tsontakis. As a dual-degree student at Bard College, Woodard also received a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature.

Jaco Wong is a Los Angeles-based composer and conductor, and currently serves as the choral director of Palisades Charter High School and Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church. He holds Master's degrees in Choral Music and Composition from University of Southern California, where he was the recipient of the Morten Lauridsen Endowed Composition Scholarship. Wong's compositions have been performed by San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Hocket piano duo, Lang Lang and the Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, and among others. He has prepared the Esperanza Azteca Youth Chorus to perform with Placido Domingo and conducted the Taipei Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Orchestra. Wong remains an active singer of Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles and has performed under conductors including Jeffrey Kahane and Helmuth Rilling. He is a native of Hong Kong.

Conductor Michael Jinbo celebrates his twenty-fifth season as Music Director of The Monteux School and Music Festival in 2020. Associate Music Director to Charles Bruck and a student of the School prior to becoming Music Director, Jinbo has enjoyed an affiliation with the school since 1983 and is the third music director in the school's 77-year history. Jinbo also currently serves as Music Director of Pennsylvania's Nittany Valley Symphony.

 

Jinbo has appeared as guest conductor in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and Germany, and has performed with a wide range of artists, including pianist Garrick Ohlsson, violinist Kyoko Takezawa, prima ballerina assoluta Galina Mezentseva and the St. Petersburg Ballet of Russia, and the late Cab Calloway.

 

Founded in 1943 by internationally renowned French-born conductor Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) and his wife, Doris Hodgkins Monteux (1894-1984), The Monteux School And Music Festival celebrates its 77th season as a summer school and festival for conductors and orchestra musicians in Hancock, Maine, inspired in part by Monteux's earlier conducting classes in France. A distinguished conductor whose storied career included music directorships of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the Metropolitan Opera, the Boston Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (which he formed), the London Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, among others, Monteux was held in high regard not only for his work with traditional repertoire, but with contemporary music. He premiered many masterworks of the 20th century, including Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Claude Debussy's Jeux, and Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and Petrushka.

 

The Monteux School and Music Festival's intensive six-week program and distinguished reputation attracts musicians nationwide and from around the world. It counts many accomplished musicians amongst its alumni, including conductors Carlos Miguel Prieto and Mei-Ann Chen. The carefully curated curriculum offers conductors and instrumentalists an unrivaled opportunity to learn a large and varied repertoire and provides training and practical experience to enable conductors to handle any conducting situation and helps instrumentalists to meet the demands of orchestral playing.  

All musicians are full-time, active participants. Players rotate within their sections but do not rotate out of the orchestra. All conductors receive weekly rehearsal time on the podium and perform in concert at the discretion of the music director. All conductors are also required to play in the orchestra. This unique aspect of the school gives conductors the opportunity to learn from both sides of the podium, fostering a positive, non-competitive environment in which conductors and instrumentalists work and learn together. Up to 18 conductors and 45 instrumentalists are accepted each season to comprise a full-orchestra.

 

The school's rigorous weekly schedule, equivalent to that of a full-time orchestra, prepares musicians for a professional career. Each week's schedule includes seven symphony masterclass rehearsals, and both symphonic and chamber music concerts conducted and performed by participating musicians. Five "Mainely Chamber Concerts" for smaller ensembles offer additional performance opportunities on Wednesday nights.

 

Each summer's curriculum covers a broad repertoire of some 60 works (more than any other summer school and festival in the country), encompassing the full scope and variety of the symphonic literature, including pops. Approximately half of the curriculum is performed in concert, the remainder studied and read in rehearsals.

 

The 77th Season of the Monteux School & Music Festival (MSMF) runs from June 14 through the final symphony concert on Sunday July 26, 2020 and marks the 25th anniversary of Music Director Michael Jinbo.  

 

The New York City Winter Concerts & Conducting Workshop, taking place near Lincoln Center, is one of the organization's newer initiatives and is now in its second installment. monteuxschool.org 

 

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