Soloists

Dennis Russel Davies, Chief Conductor & Artistic Director of the Filharmonie Brno

Dennis Russell Davies (1944), a graduate of New York’s renowned Juilliard School, began his conducting career as Music Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota (1972– 1980), and from 1977–2002 was also Chief Conductor of the American Composers Orchestra in New York, as well as, from 1991–1996, Principal Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Since 1980, he has resided primarily in Europe. Davies has been General Music Director of the Staatsoper Stuttgart (1980–1987), Chief Conductor of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Music Director of the Bonn Opera and Artistic Director of the Bonn Beethoven Festival (1987–1995). Subsequently, in Austria, he was professor of orchestral conducting at the University Mozarteum Salzburg and Chief Conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; in 2002, he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Bruckner Orchester Linz and the Landestheater Linz, a 15-year tenure which saw the inauguration, in 2013, of the new Linz Opera House. During 2009–2016, he also held the post of Chief Conductor of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. Guest engagements have included appearances with major orchestras and at prestigious opera houses throughout the United States, Japan and Europe. Since the 2018/2019 season, he has been at the helm of the Filharmonie Brno as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director; as of fall 2020, he has also assumed the position of Chief Conductor of the MDR Symphony Orchestra Leipzig.

Davies is known not only for his extraordinary breadth of repertoire, but also for his ongoing collaborations and close working relationships with prominent composers, past and present, including Luciano Berio, William Bolcom, John Cage, Manfred Trojahn, Philip Glass, Heinz Winbeck, Laurie Anderson, Philippe Manoury, Aaron Copland, Hans Werner Henze, Michael Nyman and Kurt Schwertsik. As conductor and pianist (or both simultaneously), Davies has released over 80 widely acclaimed recordings. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 2014, the French Ministry of Culture named him Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres; and in 2017 he was awarded the Austrian Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst, First Class.

Angélique Kidjo, vocalist

Five-time Grammy Award-winner Angélique Kidjo has been heralded by Time magazine as “Africa’s premier diva.” The BBC featured her in its list of the continent’s 50 most iconic fi gures, the Guardian ranked her among its Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in the World, and she was the first woman ranked by Forbes magazine in its list of Most Powerful Celebrities in Africa. In 2015 Kidjo was the recipient of the prestigious Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; in 2016 she received the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award (whose first winner was Václav Havel, in 2003); and in 2018 she won the German Sustainability Award, for her decades of commitment to the education and equality of women in Africa.

Kidjo has captivated listeners with her vocal style, which employs the traditional singing of her native Benin with infl uences of R&B, funk, jazz, and music from Europe and Latin America. In addition to recordings exploring the roads of Africa’s diaspora through Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, in 2018 she offered a reimagination of the landmark Talking Heads album Remain in Light (recorded with super-producer Jeff Bhasker), and on her 2019 album Celia she paid tribute to the iconic Cuban singer Celia Cruz. Kidjo’s latest recording, Mother Nature, her fi rst album of original music in seven years, was released in June 2021. On top of her active recording and concert schedule, Kidjo is famous for her advocacy work on behalf of children with UNICEF and Oxfam. Through her own foundation, Batonga, she is also dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa.

Laurie Anderson, vocalist, violinist, composer

Laurie Anderson is one of America’s most reknowned – and daring – creative pioneers. Known primarily for her multimedia presentations, she has cast herself in roles as varied as visual artist, composer, poet, photographer, filmmaker, electronics whiz, vocalist, and instrumentalist. Her recording career, launched by ‘O Superman’ in 1981, includes the soundtrack to her feature film Home of the Brave (1986) and Life on a String (2001). Anderson’s live shows range from simple spoken word to elaborate multi-media stage performances such as Songs and Stories from Moby Dick (1999).

In 2002, Anderson was appointed the first artist-in-residence of NASA which culminated in her 2004 touring solo performance The End of the Moon. In 2010 a retrospective of her visual and installation work opened in Sao Paulo, Brazil and later traveled to Rio de Janeiro. Her film Heart of a Dog was chosen as an official selection of the 2015 Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. In the same year, her exhibition Habeas Corpus opened at the Park Avenue Armory to wide critical acclaim and in 2016 she was the recipient of Yoko Ono’s Courage Award for the Arts for that project. Anderson continues to tour her evolving performance Language of the Future and has collaborated with Christian McBride and Philip Glass on several projects in 2017. Anderson continues to work with the activist group The Federation which she co-founded in 2017. In February of 2018 Landfall, a collaboration between Anderson and Kronos Quartet was released through Nonesuch Records. Commissioned by Kronos Quartet in 2013, the work was inspired by the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Most recently Anderson opened her largest solo exhibition at The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. titled The Weather which is open through July 31, 2022. The Weather debuts more than a dozen new artworks, interspersed with select key works, including Habeas Corpus (2015), from her five-decade career. The exhibition guides visitors through an immersive audiovisual experience in the Museum’s second-floor galleries, showcasing the artist’s creative storytelling process through her work in video, performance, installation, painting, and other media.

Maki Namakawa, pianist

Maki Namekawa is a leading figure among today’s pianists, bringing to audiences’ attention contemporary music by international composers, although she is equally at home in the classical repertoire. As a soloist and chamber musician, she performs regularly at prestigious venues such as the Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, Barbican Center and Cadogan Hall in London, Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Musikverein Wien, as well as festivals in Salzburg, Linz, Berlin, Stuttgart, Ruhr, and Rheingau. She has performed with orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orkest Amsterdam, Münchner Philharmoniker, Bamberger Symphoniker, Dresdner Philharmonie, Bruckner Orchester Linz, the American Composers Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony. Conductors she has collaborated with include Mario Venzago, Howard Griffi ths, Kasper de Roo, and Dennis Russell Davies, among others.

In 2013, Namekawa performed the world premiere of the entire cycle of Philip Glass’s 20 Études for Solo Piano at the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia, followed by a world tour and a CD recording that garnered high praise from BBC Music Magazine. In September 2018, she released the piano version of Glass’s soundtrack for the film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, depicting the life and death of Japanese writer and activist Yukio Mishima, and a year later, at the Ruhr Piano Festival, she performed the world premiere of Glass’s Piano Sonata, which he composed especially for her.

In 2003, Namekama and her husband, conductor Dennis Russell Davies, formed a piano duo, which regularly performs at major festivals in Europe and North America. Among the major works
that have been written for the duo are Philip Glass’s Four Movements for Two Pianos and Two Movements for Four Pianos (with Katia and Marielle Labèque), and Chen Yi’s China West Suite. All three of these works were commissioned by the Ruhr Piano Festival, where Maki Namekawa, Dennis Russell Davies, and Philip Glass were honored with the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize in 2017

Christian Schmitt, organist

Christian Schmitt (1976) studied church music at the University of Music Saarbrücken, organ with Daniel Roth in Paris, and musicology and Catholic theology at Saarland University in Saarbrücken.

He collaborates regularly with such worldrenowned conductors and soloists as Sir Simon Rattle, Phillipe Herreweghe, Jakub Hrůša, Marek Janowski, Manfred Honeck, Magdalena Kožená, Martin Grubinger, and Gábor Tarkövi. He has performed at the Salzburg and Lucerne festivals, and in prominent venues including the Philharmonie Berlin, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Konzert-haus Berlin, the Musikverein Wien, the Tonhalle Zürich, and the Gewandhaus Leipzig, among others. As a soloist, Schmitt has appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Bamberger Symphoniker, and prestigious radio orchestras including the NDR, RSB, MDR, WDR, SR, and RSO Vienna.

His extensive discography, counting some 40 recordings, demonstrates his versatility in programming and playing alike. For the German label CPO, Schmitt has recorded the organ works of Charles Koechlin, Sofi a Gubaidulina, Charles-Marie Widor (an ECHO Klassik prizewinner), and Joseph Jongen. For Deutsche Grammophon, he recorded the album Prayer with Magdalena Kožená, and contributed two albums to the project Bach 333 – The New Complete Edition. As a pedagogue, Schmitt has taught at universities in the United States, Italy, Norway, Mexico, Russia, and Korea, and he often acts as a consultant on the restoration and reconstruction of organs (Berlin, Zürich, Lucerne, Brno). He has served on the jury of numerous international
music competitions and is a committed contributor to the music education project “Rhapsody in School.”