Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor

Miguel Harth-Bedoya is a master of color, drawing idiomatic interpretations from a wide range of repertoire in concerts across the globe.

Celebrating more than 30 years of professional conducting at the highest levels, Mr. Harth-Bedoya has a deep commitment to passing his experience on to the next generation of conductors. He is the Music Director and Mary Franks Thompson Director of Orchestral Studies at Baylor University, Music Director Laureate of Fort Worth Symphony and Director of The Conducting Institute.

Mr. Harth-Bedoya has amassed considerable experience at the helm of orchestras, including recently completing tenures as Chief Conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra—a post he held for seven seasons—and 20 seasons as Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony, where he now holds the title of Music Director Laureate and will conduct regularly. Previously he has held Music Director positions with the Auckland Philharmonia and Eugene Symphony.

Mr. Harth-Bedoya guest conducts with orchestras around the world. In the United States he has conducted the symphonies of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and St. Louis; the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others. Following his exceptional tenure as Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic during the early years of his career, Mr. Harth-Bedoya’s “special chemistry” (LA Times) with the orchestra remains strong and he returns often as a guest conductor.

With a passionate devotion to unearthing new South American repertoire, Mr. Harth-Bedoya is the founder and Artistic Director of Caminos del Inka, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching, performing and preserving the rich musical legacy of South America. Among its varied activities, Caminos del Inka champions South American composers, produces lectures, chamber music concerts, CD and video recordings, and supports The Conducting Institute. In addition, Mr. Harth-Bedoya’s multimedia project: Caminos del Inka, a musical journey has been performed by the Chicago Symphony, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Residentie Orkest and MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony.

Born and raised in Peru, Mr. Harth-Bedoya received his bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music and his master of music degree from The Juilliard School, both under the guidance of Otto-Werner Mueller. He also studied with Seiji Ozawa and Gustav Meier at Tanglewood.

Mr. Harth-Bedoya is an environmental advocate who is committed to a zero-waste lifestyle. In 2016 he co-founded Cowboy Compost, a business geared to achieve food waste reduction. He lives in Fort Worth with his wife, Dr. Maritza Cáceres, a choral conductor, and their three children, Elena, Emilio and Elisa.

Steven Banks, saxophone

As a performer and composer, saxophonist Steven Banks is striving to bring his instrument to the heart of the classical music world. He is driven to program and write music that directly addresses aspects of the human experience and is an active and intentional supporter of diverse voices in the future of concert music. Rick Perdian of Seen and Heard International has said “one senses that Banks has the potential to be one of the transformational musicians of the twenty-first century.”

Mr. Banks is establishing himself as a compelling and charismatic soloist and in 2022, he was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and was a chosen artist for WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab. He was the first saxophonist to be awarded First Prize at the Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions. Critics have consistently recognized Mr. Banks for his warm yet glowing tone, well-crafted and communicative musical expression and deft technical abilities.

Mr. Banks has appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Utah Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Aspen Festival Orchestra and has enjoyed working with such conductors as Franz Welser-Most, Xian Zhang, Nicholas McGegan, Rafael Payare, John Adams, Peter Oundjian, Jahja Ling, Matthias Pintscher, Alain Altinoglu and Roderick Cox.

In recital, Mr. Banks has appeared across the U.S. at the San Francisco Symphony’s Spotlight Series at Davies Hall, Merkin Hall, The Kennedy Center, The Kravis Center and Festival Napa Valley with his collaborative partner, pianist Xak Bjerken. A keen chamber musician, Mr. Banks has appeared at Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Chamber Music Chicago and Aspen Music Festival, and will be the first artist-in-residence of the Skaneateles Festival in the 2023-24 season. He has collaborated with the Borromeo and St. Lawrence string quartets and will work with the Dover and Verona quartets in the coming seasons. He is a founding member of the Kenari Quartet, an all-saxophone ensemble that performs regularly together, offering inspiring and uplifting compositions and arrangements. As baritone saxophonist of Kenari, Mr. Banks won first prize at the inaugural M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and has garnered two silver medals from the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. Their album, French Saxophone Quartets, was released in 2016 on the Naxos label.

In 2023 and 2024 Mr. Banks will premiere and tour with a commissioned concerto from Grammy Award-winning composer Billy Childs. The nine co-commissioning orchestras are the Kansas City Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, Chautauqua Institution, New World Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, National Symphony and San Diego Symphony with Young Concert Artists being the tenth partner in the consortium. The three-movement, 20-minute concerto will explore aspects of the African American experience in America and takes inspiration from such poets as Nayyirah Waheed, Claude McKay and Maya Angelou.

As a composer, Mr. Banks has been commissioned by such organizations as Young Concert Artists, WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, Latitude 49, Yale University’s Project 14 Initiative and Northwestern University’s Saxophone Ensemble. Jarrett Hoffman of Cleveland Classical has said that his music showcases “a unique and ambitious blend of feelings and sounds” and portrays “a deep intimacy” and “a sense of vulnerability.” His work for alto saxophone and string quartet, Cries, Sighs and Dreams, was premiered in May 2022 at Carnegie Hall with the Borromeo Quartet. His work for solo piano, Fantasy on Recurring Daydreams, was premiered by Zhu Wang in April 2023. Mr. Banks’ works are published by Murphy Music Press.

An advocate for diversity and inclusion in music education and performance, Mr. Banks was part of the TEDxNorthwesternU 2017 conference presenting his dynamic approach to overcoming institutionalized prejudices against women and people of color. In addition, he has written about and given lectures on the history of Black classical composers. In collaboration with Anthony Trionfo and Randall Goosby, the Learning to Listen roundtable was created to discuss the nuances of the Black experience in classical music and beyond. In partnership with the Sphinx Organization, they also created the Illuminate! series, which opened three essential conversations on the subject of music education, artist activism and the LGBTQIA+ community in classical music.

Mr. Banks serves as a visiting faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music and holds the Jackie McLean Fellowship at the University of Hartford. He was previously Assistant Professor of Saxophone at both Ithaca College and the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory. His own primary saxophone teachers have been Taimur Sullivan, Otis Murphy Jr. and Galvin Crisp. He holds a bachelor of music degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, as well as a master of music degree from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.

Mr. Banks is an endorsing artist for Conn-Selmer instruments, D’Addario Woodwinds, lefreQue Sound Solutions and Key Leaves.

Molly Turner, conductor

Molly Turner is a Chinese-born conductor and composer. Recently, she has conducted the Orchestre de Paris, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, Juilliard Orchestra, Dallas Opera Orchestra, Primrose International Viola Competition, Colburn Orchestra and Eastern Festival Orchestra. Highlights of the 2022-23 season included a debut with San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox Series, a Concert Scolaire with Orchestre de Paris, conducting the premiere of her own new orchestra work with the Tacoma Youth Symphony, Colburn Chamber Music Society with David Rejano and Cosi! Men Are Like That with opera company White Snake Projects. She has served as assistant conductor for the Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, San Diego Symphony, National Polish Radio Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra and Colburn Orchestra. In 2019 she was the youngest conductor invited for residency at the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors. She has assisted Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, Stéphane Denève, Yaniv Dinur, Rafael Payare, Nicholas McGegan and Jeffrey Milarsky.

Ms. Turner is a devoted advocate for contemporary and modern music. She has collaborated with many living composers including Paul Novak, Max Vinetz, Lauren Vandervelden, Corey Chang, Sujin Kang, Webster Gadbois and Sofia Ouyang and has a strong affinity for the music of Stravinsky, Bartók and Lutosławski. She is a member of the Colburn Contemporary Ensemble and has conducted works by Lou Harrison, Timo Andres and Nina Young with them. As part of Juilliard’s ChoreoComp, Ms. Turner premiered four different dance pieces created by current student composers and choreographers and at Rice, she conducted and composed for Hear&Now: New Music.

 Pursuing projects outside of the traditional concert hall is a core part of Ms. Turner’s artistic identity. In 2021 she performed an open improvisation set on violin alongside Pablo O’Connell, Kebra-Seyoun Charles and Ryan Jung in an Alice Tully Hall window performance. While she was a Teaching Artist Fellow at Juilliard, she was involved in creating an improvisatory work that used K-8 student “found sound” recordings as source material. From 2017-19 was the artistic director for New Art / New Music at the Moody Center for the Arts. There she worked with composers and visual artists to curate a concert of new works that were site-specific to current exhibitions at the Moody Center. In 2017 she played viola in a multimedia performance art project alongside Angelbet Metoyer creating art live, Saul Williams reciting poetry and other musicians openly improvising.  In 2015 she co-wrote a graphic score with Sarah Grace-Graves for sculptor Katie Grinnan’s Astrology Orchestra written for the Turrell Skypsace.

In her own music, Ms. Turner is interested in the balance between strictly dictated elements and more aleatoric notation. Her relationship to the standard repertoire is often integrated in subtle ways beneath the foreground of the music. A violinist and violist herself, she finds string instruments endlessly fascinating. Improvisation is a core part of her writing process and she often starts her work as voice memos or graphic scores. In 2018 her string quartet, The Shapes of Stories, was read by the Arditti Quartet. Her work has been heard in Benaroya Hall, Duncan Recital Hall, the Moody Center for the Arts and has been privately recorded.  

She completed her master’s degree in orchestral conducting at The Juilliard School studying with David Robertson and received a bachelor in music composition cum laude from Rice University. She recently was pursuing an artist diploma at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, where she studied under the guidance of Esa-Pekka Salonen in the Negaunee Conducting Program as a Salonen Fellow. She has studied composition with Kurt Stallmann, Arthur Gottschalk, Karim Al-Zand and Richard Lavenda. She has attended the Gstaad Festival Conducting Academy where she worked with Johannes Schlaefli, Jaap van Zweden and Baldur Brönnimann and the Eastern Music Festival, where she worked with Gerard Schwarz. In her free time, she enjoys biking, playing Ultimate Frisbee and reading.