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Mr. Edward Benyas

Southern Illinois University
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Member Bio Edward Benyas is Professor of Oboe and Conducting at SIU Carbondale, Music Director of the Southern Illinois Symphony, the New Chicago Chamber Orchestra—with which he made his European conducting debut—and founder and Artistic Director of the Southern Illinois Music Festival, which presents three-dozen concerts annually each June. Mr. Benyas previously served as Music Director of the Skokie Valley Symphony, the North Shore Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Fantastique! and the Southern Illinois Youth Orchestra. He appeared on national television leading a chorus and orchestra comprised of musicians from throughout Illinois during funeral services for the late Senator Paul Simon. Under his leadership, the Southern Illinois Symphony was named Orchestra of the Year, and in 2005 he was named Conductor of the Year, by the Illinois Council of Orchestras. A student of Ray Still, Robert Morgan and Victor Yampolsky, Mr. Benyas holds a graduate degree in Orchestral Conducting and Oboe Performance from Northwestern University, as well as Bachelor and Juris Doctor degrees from the University of Michigan. He also studied at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors under the late Charles Bruck, and at the International Workshop for Opera Conductors with the late Georg Tintner. Mr. Benyas has guest-conducted orchestras in California, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Virginia, Maine, North Dakota, Washington, Canada, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Important past conducting engagements include conducting La Bohème at the Silesian State Opera, guest conducting the New Symphony Orchestra of Sofia, Bulgaria, the Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra and Apprentice Artists, the Illinois Chamber Symphony, the Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and directing the Southern Illinois Symphony Orchestra before the President and an audience of 10,000.
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Jesus Manuel Berard

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Member Bio Jesus Manuel Berard was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in New York City. His conducting teachers include Otto-Werner Mueller (Yale), Harold Farberman (Conductors Institute at Bard), David Epstein (M.I.T.), and Piero Bellugi and Frank Battisti (New England Conservatory). He studied piano with Carol Rankin, Carolyn Kleiner and Thomas Vogelman, and voice (bass-baritone) with Marian Thompson, Margarethe Mueller, George Fiore and Lorna Cooke DeVaron. Studies in composition, theory and analysis include Donald Martino and Robert Cogan at the New England Conservatory of Music (B.M., M.M.), and Patricia Carpenter, Jonathan Kramer and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University (M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.), for which he wrote his dissertation on the music of Gustav Mahler. Conducting and composition masterclasses include Larry Rachleff, Carl St. Clair, Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions. A passionate, dynamic and seasoned performer, teacher and scholar, Berard has conducted and taught at the New England Conservatory, Columbia University, American University, Hofstra University and Connecticut College. He has served as music director and conductor of professional organizations such as the Peconic Chamber Orchestra in the Hamptons (New York) and the resident Chamber Players at Connecticut College, as well as the American University Symphony Orchestra, Columbia University Chamber Orchestra, Connecticut College Orchestra, Hofstra University Symphony Orchestra, and the DC Youth Orchestra. He has guest conducted the Bulgarian State Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra (Burgas), Teatro Lirico of DC, the Embassy Series (Washington, DC), Ridotto (New York), the Prince George's Philharmonic (Maryland), the Richmond Philharmonic Orchestra (Virginia), the New Music festivals at the University of Maryland School of Music and UNC East Carolina University School of Music, the orchestras of Florida International University, Georgetown University, Long Island University and the University of Maryland, as well as the Pennsylvania Music Educators Association State Orchestra Festival, and he is in demand as a clinician, adjudicator and competition Judge. Recent performance venues include the Austrian Embassy (Washington, DC), Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (University of Maryland, College Park), GALA Hispanic Theatre (Washington, DC), Ivan Vulpye Concert Hall (Burgas, Bulgaria), Jordan Hall (New England Conservatory, Boston), Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall, Terrace Theatre and Millenium Stage, the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC), Temple University Performing Arts Center (Philadelphia), THEARC (Washington, DC), U.S. State Department (Washington, DC), Washington National Cathedral, Wertheim Performing Arts Center (Miami), Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (New York), The White House (Washington, DC).
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David Bernard

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Member Bio David Bernard transforms orchestras — and the communities they serve. He is Music Director of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony, which he founded in 1999, the Massapequa Philharmonic, and the Eglevsky Ballet, and an active guest conductor with orchestras across the United States including the Brooklyn Symphony, Greenwich Symphony, Dubuque Symphony, Greater Newburgh Symphony, Island Symphony, South Shore Symphony, and ensembles from the Manhattan School of Music. As a conductor of ballet, Bernard has collaborated with dancers from the New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Miami City Ballet, including Jared Angle, Tyler Angle, Santiago Castaneda, Ji Young Chae, Jeffrey Cirio, Sarah Gavilla, Miriam Miller, and Unity Phelan. Bernard's conviction that an orchestra must be a living part of its community — not a concert hall institution apart from it — has defined his tenure as Music Director of the Massapequa Philharmonic, where the orchestra serves as Orchestra in Residence at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts. Under his leadership the Massapequa Philharmonic has built deep partnerships with the Nassau County Museum of Art, the Eglevsky Ballet, the Long Island Choral Society, and the Massapequa Public Schools, and has developed one of Long Island's most adventurous concert series — spanning three centuries of orchestral repertoire alongside collaborations with the Indigo Girls and the Classical Mystery Tour Beatles Retrospective. It is this vision of music as a force for community transformation that led Long Island Weekly to call Bernard the Johnny Appleseed of Classical Music. Bernard's passion for the concert hall as a place of discovery extends to film music, which he approaches with the same interpretive seriousness as the great symphonic repertoire. His live-to-screen conducting includes Jaws in Concert before 1,300 people at Tilles Center and the world concert hall premiere of the Star Trek VI Overture — not performed live since the film's release in 1991 — reflecting a conviction that the line between cinema and the symphony was never as clear as we imagined. Bernard's work has been recognized by the world's most respected musical institutions. He is Conductor of the Year and Platinum Prize winner of the European Classical Music Awards Grand Prix 2025, winner of the Master Prize of the UK International Conducting Competition, and a multiple First Prize winner of the Orchestral Conducting Competition of The American Prize. At the Saint-Saëns International Music Competition 2026, he received both the Grand Prize in Conducting and the Best Saint-Saens Performance Special Award for his performance of the Symphony No. 3 with organist Paolo Bordignon and pianist Maxim Lando. A Voting Member of the GRAMMY Recording Academy, Bernard's recordings with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony have been praised by Gramophone — where he is also a contributing writer — BBC Music Magazine, Fanfare, Stereophile, Pizzicato, MusicWeb International, and The Arts Desk, and reviewed on four continents. His Mahler Symphony No. 9 recording received the Clouzine International Music Awards' Best Classical Conductor, Global Music Awards Silver Medals in Symphony Music and Orchestra Performance, and LIT Music Awards Gold Medals in Best Orchestra and Best Conductor. Bernard has presented world premieres of scores by Bruce Adolphe, Chris Caswell, John Mackey, Ted Rosenthal, and Jake Runestad, and has collaborated with Zlatomir Fung, Jeffrey Biegel, Carter Brey, Stanley Drucker, Whoopi Goldberg, Sirena Huang, Anthony McGill, Jon Manasse, Inbal Segev, and many others. As a scholar, he has developed new critical editions of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and The Firebird Suite with the Edwin F. Kalmus editorial team alongside Clinton F. Nieweg, retired principal librarian of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and has published editions of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and Schumann's Symphony No. 2. He is inventor of US Patent No. 11,673,070 for the InsideOut Concert format. He teaches Musicianship in Performance — a seminar on interpretive decision-making in performance — at the Juilliard School, Meadowmount School of Music, and Long Island University. Bernard studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School.
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Paul Bhasin

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Member Bio Dr. Paul Bhasin serves as Director of Orchestral Studies at Emory University. In this capacity, he conducts the Emory University Symphony Orchestra, Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra, and teaches conducting. Praised for his “crisp, clear” conducting and “highly expressive” interpretations, Bhasin’s career began when he won the Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition in 1998. He has led a variety of university, academic, and professional ensembles throughout North America and abroad including recent performances at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and throughout the People’s Republic of China. Bhasin’s most recent guest engagements include appearances with the Virginia Symphony Orchestra (including live radio broadcasts of subscription concerts), American Youth Philharmonic, Williamsburg Symphony, New Jersey Youth Symphony, and at Interlochen Arts Academy. He has also led performances as a guest conductor with members of the Richmond Symphony, National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and Kennedy Center Opera Orchestra. Ensembles under his direction have collaborated with soloists from the San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, and Richmond Symphony. He has led honor orchestras and bands (including at the All-State level) and served as a guest orchestral clinician throughout the United States, and presented at national conferences including the Midwest Orchestra Clinic and the National Music Teachers Association Conference. ARRANGEMENTS Bhasin’s transcriptions and arrangements are published by Balquhidder Music and have been performed and commissioned in the US and abroad by the St. Louis Opera Theater, Grand Tetons Festival Orchestra, La Unió Musical l’Horta de Sant Marcel·lí (Valencia, Spain) and the Washington Symphonic Brass (DC). In 2015, Bhasin composed and conducted the orchestral score to 9:23 Films’ motion picture, Hogtown (award winner at the Berlin, Los Angeles and Nashville International Black Film Festivals, and Cannes Festival Marché du Film). Michael Phillips of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that the film was “...scored beautifully by composer Paul Bhasin...better than the entirety of the last few features I’ve seen, period.” In 2016, reviewer Ben Kenigsberg of the New York Times named the film a “Critic’s Pick” and one of the “Top 10 Films of 2016.” Bhasin’s previous appointments include positions at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Triton College, and The College of William & Mary. He received his musical education from Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has served as Music Director & Conductor of the Williamsburg Youth Orchestras and has led honor orchestras and bands (including at the All-State level) and served as a guest orchestral clinician throughout the United States, and presented at national conferences including the Midwest Orchestra Clinic and the National Music Teachers Association Conference. CHAMBER MUSIC An avid proponent of chamber music,
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Karen Ní Bhroin

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Member Bio Karen Ní Bhroin, whose career on both sides of the Atlantic is attracting attention wherever she conducts, is one of Ireland’s leading young conductors. This season Karen has made debuts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, BBC Philharmonic, first engagements with The Ulster Orchestra Belfast, Orchestre Métropolitan Québec and a return to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. Other recent highlights include concerts with Grand Rapids Symphony (Michigan), and engagement with Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, and the premiere of Mark Lanz Weiser’s Opera, Galaxies in Her eyes, (High Point, North Carolina). This autumn she launched her new podcast, And Other Duties, The Life of the Assistant Conductor. Telling the stories of assistant conductors over the world and what it is they really do. Karen starts 2023 off performing with West of England Youth Orchestra, later on in the season she will work with Chetham’s School of Music Symphony Orchestra. Having trained at home in Ireland as Conductor in Training from 2016-2018, Karen worked closely with the National Symphony Orchestra and National Philharmonic Choir. She subsequently moved to the USA, where held the position of Assistant Conductor of North Carolina’s Winston-Salem Symphony, Music Director of the Winston-Salem Symphony Youth Orchestras Program and Associate Conductor and Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts from 2020-2022. In 2017 Karen made her debut with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, in 2019 she was appointed Assistant Director of the Akron Symphony Chorus, Ohio and in 2020 made her debut with the Akron Symphony Orchestra. Assisting some of the best conductors in the world today, Karen has worked closely with JoAnn Falletta, Nathalie Stutzmann and Thomas Wilkins. She has also been mentored by Marin Alsop, Timothy Redmond and Neil Thomson. Karen has worked as Assistant Conductor at National Music Festival USA with conductor Richard Rosenberg (2019), attended Dartington International Summer School Advanced Conducting programme (2019) and was a Britten-Pears Young Artist at Snape Maltings, UK (2018). During 2021, Karen was part of the inaugural conducting academy at National Orchestral Institute, where she was a fellow with Marin Alsop. During 2022, Ní Bhroin received an artists bursary for a French language residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. A music education graduate of Trinity College Dublin, she earned her Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting at Kent State University, Ohio, where she studied with Dr. Jungho Kim as his Graduate Assistant Conductor.
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Tom Bickley Tom Bickley California State University East Bay

California State University East Bay
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Dr. Anna Binneweg

Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic, Naptown Philharmonic Orchestra, AACC Symphony Orchestra
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Member Bio As the Music Director/Conductor of the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra, the AACC Symphony Orchestra (Annapolis, MD) and a frequent guest conductor on the national and international scene, Binneweg repeatedly captures audiences with her enthusiasm and passion for music. Putting her musicians, and not herself in the spotlight, Binneweg brings out the best in them. Her orchestras’ shared excitement makes classical music sound new and fresh. Her programs and performance are alluring, engaging and attract audiences of all ages, particularly making classical repertoire more appealing to younger audiences. Over the course of her career, Dr. Binneweg has performed in some of the nation’s most reputable concert venues including the Kennedy Center Concert Hall and Terrace Theater in Washington, D.C., the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and made her European conducting debut in Lviv, Ukraine in 2012. A committed music educator, Dr. Binneweg’s youth orchestra experiences include appointments with the Houston Youth Symphony (Houston, TX) and the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony (San Luis Obispo, CA), in addition to her guest conducting appearances with colleges and universities throughout the United States. She is in frequent demand as an orchestra clinician and adjudicator throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, and served on the national executive board of directors for the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA) from 2014-2018. She has worked with conductors such as Leonard Slatkin, Daniel Barenboim, Robert Spano, James Paul, Michael Morgan, Duaine Wolfe, Nurhan Arman and David Effron through various engagements sponsored by the League of American Orchestras, the Conductors Guild, the Conductors Institute of New York and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Earning a doctorate degree of music in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University where she studied with Victor Yampolsky, she has also served on the conducting faculties at Loyola University (Chicago, IL), the Sherwood Conservatory of Music (Chicago, IL), and American University (Washington, DC). Like all conductors, Maestra Binneweg is not only the most visible part of the orchestra, but the advocate and face of the ensembles she leads. As an active conductor of the 2019-2020 season, she is busy conducting approximately 30 performances this year!
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Mr. Christopher Blair

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Member Bio Christopher Blair is a Partner at AKUSTIKS, based in Norwalk Connecticut where he specializes in the acoustic design of concert halls, opera houses, and theaters. Current or recently completed projects include the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, home of the Nashville Symphony, the Juliet Rosch Recital Hall for SUNY-Fredonia, new additions to the Cleveland Institute of Music, renovations to the Boston Opera House, renovations and additions at the Eastman School of Music, as well as major projects in the USA, Mexico, Canada, Thailand, Columbia, Chile, and Brazil. Some of his important projects prior to his work at AKUSTIKS include Singapore’s Esplanade Performing Arts Centre, Lucerne’s Cultural and Congress Centre, the City of Culture in Galicia, Spain, and Brazil’s famous Sala São Paulo. Following undergraduate studies at the University of Vermont, Mr. Blair earned Masters degrees in Orchestral Conducting from the New England Conservatory and Acoustics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early professional conducting appointments included the Music Directorships of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of Boston, the South End Symphony and Choral Society, the Melrose (MA) Symphony Orchestra, the Brown University Orchestra (where he was also Chairman of the String Program), and the position of Artistic Director of the Boston Light Opera. In recent years Blair has appeared in concert with the Bolivian National Orchestra, the Porto Alegre (Brazil) Symphony Orchestra, the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the Tianjin (China) Symphony Orchestra, the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, the Vidin (Bulgaria) Philharmonic, and the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra. In the course of his acoustical consulting activities he has also led rehearsals of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.
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Frederick Blanchard

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Niclas Blixt

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Member Bio Niclas Blixt holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Music Education (University College of Music in Örebro) and a Masters Degree in Orchestral and Choral Conducting (Luleå University). Besides professor Petter Sundkvist and professor Erik Westerberg, Niclas studied with Siegfried Naumann in Malmö, Stig Westerberg in Stockholm and Jorma Panula at the legendary Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He also studied music psychology and musicology at Uppsala University and music education at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. He has participated in many conducting programs and workshops over the world, for example École Normale de Musique (interpretation and score study) in Paris, The Wind Band Conducting Workshop (conducting) in Columbus, and The Juilliard School (conducting) in New York. The lack of opportunities for Swedish conductors in the late 90s, forced him to found his own chamber orchestra - Uppsala Sinfonietta. A successful first season along with good recordings, opened up possibilities for launching a freelance career with support from maestro Herbert Blomstedt. The Royal Swedish Music Academy awarded him two prestigious conducting scholarships, 2016 on merits and 2017 after an audition with one of Swedens foremost symphony orchestras. Today he holds three positions in the capital area of Sweden - as Chief conductor for Pro Musica Symphony Orchestra, Music Director for Södertälje Symphony Orchestra and Conductor for Stockholm Wind Ensemble. A passion for conducting, inspirational leadership and dedication to teaching defines his career and an infectious spirit of adventure and the belief that music exists in everyone is the trademarks of Niclas musicianship. His main focus is conducting, but he is also devoted to composing, arranging, teaching, music research and performing chamber music. Niclas Blixt has a broad knowledge of genres and conducts Brahms, along with Ellington with the same energy and passion. Musicals, other popular music and crossover projects involving music from other parts of the world is also a part of his repertoire. He is a dedicated member of both The Swedish and the International Conductors Guild.
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