Michigan Philharmonic: America 250! Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue Performers

Nan Washburn is one of the most innovative and dynamic conductors working in the United States today. A two-time winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Conducting (2013 and 2025), recipient of the 2016 Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music, and honoree of 19 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, she is widely recognized for her imaginative programming and compelling performances. Critics have praised her work for its “perspicacity, nerve, imagination and all-round savvy.” Washburn is currently celebrating her 28th season as Music Director and Conductor of the Michigan Philharmonic, where her leadership has brought national recognition, artistic growth, and expanded community engagement throughout Southeast Michigan. Over the course of her distinguished career, Washburn has served as music director, conductor, and artistic leader for numerous orchestras across the country, including the Women’s Philharmonic, which she co-founded and helped establish as a pioneering force for music by women composers. She has conducted orchestras nationwide and collaborated with many of America’s leading contemporary composers and acclaimed soloists. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara and the New England Conservatory of Music, Washburn has also earned recognition for her advocacy of new music, arts education, and women in the arts, making her one of the most respected and influential conductors in American orchestral music.

In an age when many artists' fortunes begin with a meteoric ascent and quickly cool with the inexorable free-fall, pianist Jeffrey Biegel has managed to buck that trend, fashioning a career of steady success studded with concerts at major venues with major orchestras, a Grammy winning recording, and more than 30 commissioned works by living composers. His life takes its roots from age three, barely able to hear nor speak, until corrected by surgery. The 'reverse Beethoven' phenomenon explains his lifelong commitment to music, having heard only vibrations in his formative years. 2025 brings the World Premiere of three new works for piano and orchestra: Adolphus Hailstork's "Concerto no. 3" with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Melissa Manchester's "AWAKE!" for Piano and Orchestra with the Endless Mountain Music Festival, and, James Lee III's "Concerto in A" with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. The 2024 recording of Jake Runestad's "Dreams of the Fallen" with True Concord Voices and Orchestra garnered a Best Choral Performance Grammy nomination, on the Reference Recordings label. June 2023-August 2027 features the Rhapsody National Initiative - the first 50-state project for a new work for soloist and orchestra, also the first 50-state project for a new work without composer fees required from orchestras. Peter Boyer's "Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue" has embraced the nation and boasts a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra on the Naxos label.

GRAMMY-nominated Peter Boyer is one of the most frequently performed American orchestral composers of his generation. His works have received over 900 public performances by more than 300 orchestras, and tens of thousands of broadcasts by classical radio stations around the United States and abroad. He has conducted recordings of his music with three of the world’s finest orchestras: the London Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.