Eldar Nebolsin enjoys a busy international career as a soloist, recitalist and chamber music player, appearing with conductors, orchestras and colleagues of international distinction. During the 2009–2010 season he enjoyed the honour of being Artist in Residence for Musis Sacrum in Arnhem following his successful début with the Gelders Orkest and Nikolay Alexeev in 2008. In 2005 he was unanimously awarded the Sviatoslav Richter Prize in the First International Piano Competition in Moscow, where he was also honoured with the special award for The Best Classical Concerto Performance. Eldar Nebolsin has lived in Spain since 1991 and currently holds a place on the faculty of the International Institute of Chamber Music in Madrid, teaching alongside Ralf Gothoni, and is regularly invited to give master-classes both in piano solo repertoire and chamber music.

www.eldarnebolsin.com

One of the world’s oldest national symphony orchestras, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra has charmed audiences with memorable concerts and recordings for nearly seventy years. Today, the NZSO is recognised as an outstanding orchestra of international stature and its reputation for artistic excellence attracts many of the world’s leading conductors and soloists each year. In 2016, the NZSO was nominated for Best Orchestral Performance at the prestigious Grammy Awards for a Naxos recording of works by Chinese composer Zhou Long, including the Symphony ’Humen 1839’, conducted by Darrell Ang (8.570611). The NZSO has an extensive catalogue of recordings, mostly on the Naxos label. More than one million of these CDs have been sold internationally in the past decade.

www.nzso.co.nz

Michael Stern is the Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony and the Founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee. Stern and Kansas City have been hailed for their remarkable artistic ascent, original programming, organizational and audience growth and development since his tenure began and have entered a new era in their new home Helzberg Hall at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. Past positions have included chief conductor of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, Permanent Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestre National de Lille. In North America, Michael Stern has conducted many orchestras including those of New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto as well as several orchestras throughout Europe and Asia.