JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic and Virginia Symphony and is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center of North Carolina. Recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, winner of the Stokowski Competition, and the Toscanini, Ditson and Bruno Walter conducting awards, Falletta has also received twelve ASCAP awards and served on the U.S. National Council on the Arts. A champion of American music, she has presented over five hundred works by American composers including 110 world premières.

Fred Child is the host of APM’s Performance Today, the most-listened-to classical music radio show in the USA. He is also a commentator and announcer for Live from Lincoln Center on PBS, and has hosted concert broadcasts from around the world. He has been a presenter for BBC Radio 3 and made his acting début in 2011 in a live performance and video project. He has narrated works with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the U.S. Marine Band, at the Aspen Festival, and has given concert talks across the country.

Winner of the prestigious ECHO Klassik Instrumentalist of the Year 2015 Award for her Naxos recording Ysaÿe’s 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin, the Best Up-and-Coming Artist 2014 Award and the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics 2014 for her Naxos recordings of the Mendelssohn Violin Concertos and Complete Music for Violin by Sarasate, Tianwa Yang is referred to as “an unquestioned master of the violin” by American Record Guide who “rises above her competition” (Fanfare), while quickly establishing herself as a leading international performer and recording artist.

Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from across the globe, to local audiences and visitors from across the United States and around the world. It has presented numerous world premières and new productions of classical music, dance, and theatre from some of today’s most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. Virginia Arts Festival celebrates its 20th season in Spring 2016.

Jared McGuire is a native of Huntington, New York. Some of his favourite roles include the title character in Master Harold and the Boys with Cape May Stage, Marchbanks in Bernard Shaw’s Candida with Pittsburgh Public Theatre, and Solomon in the regional première of Stephen Karam’s Speech and Debate at the American Theatre Company in Chicago, as well as the films Grace, SubterraNYa, and Behind the Mirror.

Jeff Biehl is a New York-based actor who has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in regional theatres throughout America, as well as in television and on film. Broadway credits include Machinal with Roundabout. Off-Broadway, he is Ragnar Brovik in the Jonathan Demme film of Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory’s A Master Builder. Television credits include Forever, Southland and several episodes of Law & Order CI, Law & Order S.V.U. and Law & Order.