Edwin Outwater, conductor

Edwin Outwater is a visionary conductor who is reinventing the concert experience with major orchestras and institutions throughout the world. Equally adept at interpreting canonical masterworks, premiering new commissions, and connecting audiences with repertoire beyond the mainstream, he is, in the words of Michael Tilson Thomas, “one of the most innovate conductors on the scene today.”

Mr. Outwater’s recent projects include “Sound Health,” a collaboration with soprano Renée Fleming, The Kennedy Center and the National Institutes of Health, as well as a jazz version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. He also appeared with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall in a concert for families featuring a world premiere of composer Caroline Shaw, narrated by actor John Lithgow.

Mr. Outwater’s long association with the San Francisco Symphony continues this season with S&M2, a collaboration with Metallica and the opening performance at San Francisco’s new Chase Center arena. A frequent conductor and curator of their SoundBox series, he returns for a performance with composer Missy Mazzoli. He also conducts and hosts “Holiday Gaiety,” an LGBTQ+ holiday concert he created with drag performer Peaches Christ, now in its third year.

As Music Director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony from 2007-17, Mr. Outwater revitalized the orchestra and brought it international acclaim. He led notable world premieres from a wide range of composers, including Nico Muhly, Nicole Lizée, Richard Reed Parry, Owen Pallett, and many others. His Intersections series connected orchestral music to other disciplines, including quantum physics, neuroscience, literature, film, food, and yoga. It also featured a diverse array of artists from all musical genres, from cellist Johannes Moser to Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq. In 2016 he created “Hack The Orchestra,” the first ever orchestra hackathon that challenged young programmers to create new content for the concert experience. At the end of this tenure as Music Director, he was named Music Director Laureate of the orchestra.

Mr. Outwater’s recent debuts include The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall, Nagoya Philharmonic and Lyric Opera of Chicago. This season he returns to the Chicago Symphony for the world premiere of Mason Bates’ World’s Greatest Synth, as well as the National Symphony and New World Symphony. A committed music educator, he has recently conducted at the Pacific Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, San Francisco Conservatory and Flemish Youth Orchestra.

A native of Santa Monica, California, Mr. Outwater graduated cum laude in English literature from Harvard University, where he was music director of the Bach Society Orchestra and the a cappella group Harvard Din and Tonics, and wrote the music for the 145th annual production of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. He received his degree in conducting from the University of California – Santa Barbara, where he studied with Heiichiro Ohyama and Paul Polivnick, besides studying music theory and composition with John Stewart, Joel Feigin and Leonard Stein.

PaviElle French, vocals and piano

PaviElle French is an Emmy Award-winning interdisciplinary artist, hailing from Rondo—a historically Black neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2021-22), as well as a McKnight Artist Fellow (2020), and has received a Sage (Cowles) Award for Dance and Choreography. She is a Global Artists Initiative - Artist In Residence at MacPhail Center For The Arts. She is an American Composers Forum Grant recipient for the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra-commissioned piece, A Requiem for Zula (2019), written in celebration of her mother's life.

Ms. French is known for her powerhouse vocals and performing with an equally powerful six-piece band. She was voted as Minneapolis City Page’s “Best R&B Vocalist of 2015,” her band was named one of First Avenue's Best New Bands of 2015 and was a featured artist on TPT's “Lowertown Line” (2015).

Ms. French honed her craft as a youth at the Penumbra Theatre, SteppingStone Theatre and with collective, EduPoetic Enterbrainment. Growing up in a family steeped in music, she says that she wants to make music that honors and represents the Black Arts aesthetic.