Artists

• Thomas Wilkins

  Conductor / Host

  Devoted to promoting a lifelong enthusiasm for music, Thomas Wilkins brings energy and commitment to audiences of all ages. Hailed as a master at communicating and connecting with audiences, he is principal conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; artistic advisor, education and community engagement, at the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and principal guest conductor of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra; and he holds Indiana University’s Henry A. Upper chair of orchestral conducting, established by the late Barbara and David Jacobs. He completed a long and successful tenure as music director of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2020–21 season. Previous posts have included resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Florida Orchestra (Tampa Bay).

  
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• Jamie Bernstein

  Special Guest

  Jamie Bernstein is a writer, narrator, broadcaster, and filmmaker who has transformed a lifetime of loving music into a career of sharing her knowledge and excitement with others. Inspired by her father, Leonard Bernstein, and his lifelong impulse to share and teach, she has devised multiple ways of communicating her own excitement about orchestral music. Beginning 15 years ago with The Bernstein Beat — a family concert about her father’s music modeled after his own groundbreaking Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic — she designed, wrote, and narrated concerts for worldwide audiences of all ages about the music of Mozart, Copland, Stravinsky, and many others. In Spanish-speaking locations such as Madrid, Havana, and Caracas, she narrates in Spanish thanks to her Chilean-born mother, Felicia Montealegre, who raised her children to be bilingual.

  
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• Doug Fitch

  Director / Designer

  Doug Fitch has directed and designed several staged projects for the New York Philharmonic, including Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, and A Dancer’s Dream (combining Stravinsky’s ballet scores for The Fairy’s Kiss and Petrushka), as well as HK Gruber’s Gloria — A Pig Tale, which the NY Phil co-presented with MetLiveArts and The Juilliard School. He has also directed several NY Phil Young People’s Concerts and Very Young People’s Concerts. Fitch’s career highlights include designing and directing Puccini’s Turandot at Santa Fe Opera; Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel at Los Angeles Opera; and Peter and the Wolf in Hollywood at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which became an award-winning app narrated by Alice Cooper; and he designed sets and costumes for the PBS Great Performances broadcast of Black Lucy and the Bard for the Nashville Ballet with music by Rhiannon Giddens, and Suzanne Farrin’s Dolce la Morte for MetLiveArts. He created  Tanglewood’s production of Carter’s What Next?, which was filmed and screened at The Museum of Modern Art. Fitch’s production of Orphic Moments (comprising works by Matthew Aucoin and Gluck) was premiered at National Sawdust and reprised at Salzburg’s Landestheater and The Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Le Grand Macabre was remounted at Hamburg’s ElbPhilharmonie. Fitch devised a puppet production titled Punkitititi, featuring the Salzburg Marionette Theater and starring Geoff Sobelle, which was presented by Mozart Woche 2020. Currently, he is developing several new music / theater projects with composers Shih-hui Chen, Scott Wheeler, and Doug Cuomo, and will direct and design a production of Matthew Aucoin and Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice at Boston Lyric Opera.

  
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• Fiona Khuong-Huu

  Violin

  Born in New York City, 16-year-old Fiona Khuong-Huu started studying the violin with the Suzuki method at age 4. She has attended the Juilliard Pre-College Division since age ten, studying with Li Lin and Itzhak Perlman. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, London, and more. She most recently had the honor of performing in the presence of King Charles III at Lancaster House with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Marios Papadopoulos, with whom she has performed as soloist at Windsor Castle and the Frick Collection, as well as in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and Buckingham Palace with Maxim Vengerov. She has also performed as soloist with The Juilliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall, with the Flanders Symphony Orchestra at Brussels’s Bozar Concert Hall, and with the Arrigoni Orchestra in Italy.

  
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