In 1977, a collective of fearless New York City musicians came together to form the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), an ensemble dedicated to the creation, celebration, performance, and promotion of orchestral music by American composers. Over more than 40 years committed to artistry, creativity, community, and equity, ACO has blossomed into a national institution that not only cultivates and develops the careers of living composers, but also provides composers a direct pipeline to partnerships with many of America’s major symphony orchestras. In addition to its annual concert series at Carnegie Hall, ACO produces national educational programs for all ages, and composer advancement programs to foster a community of creators, audience, performers, collaborators, and funders—all dedicated to American composition. Visit americancomposers.org for more information.

Widely sought-after for his depth of approach, interpretive imagination, and expressivity, Zimbabwe-born American conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni has led many critically lauded performances with orchestras around the globe, performing at some of the most prestigious concert halls and venues in the world, including the Philharmonie Berlin, Elbphilharmonie, Royal Concertgebouw, Philharmonie de Paris, Carnegie Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank Centre, and Lincoln Center. Recent collaborators have included the BBC Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, and Klangforum Wien, among many others. “A conductor who clearly knows his way around an avant-garde score” (The Times, London), Kaziboni has been hailed by critics as among the foremost interpreters of modern classical music. He has led premieres of hundreds of new works and has had a long association with two of the foremost contemporary music groups in Europe: Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt) and Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), where he served as assistant conductor at the beginning of his career and now collaborates as conductor and curator. Kaziboni is currently artistic advisor of Boston Lyric Opera, music director of the Composers Conference, artist-in-residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble, and a professor of orchestral studies and contemporary music at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where he was 2019 Teacher of the Year. A former Fulbright fellow, Kaziboni holds degrees from the University of Southern California and the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

Baritone Sidney Outlaw’s engagements this season include appearances as Marcello in Chattanooga Symphony and Opera’s concert performance of Puccini’s La bohème, and soloist in Opera Memphis’ performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana and Jacksonville Symphony’s performance of Handel’s Messiah. He also joins the Oratorio Society of New York as Manoah in Handel’s Samson at Carnegie Hall, and Nashville Symphony as a soloist in a double bill of Carmina Burana and Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. This season’s operatic engagements include the title role of Don Giovanni with Boston Baroque and Toledo Opera’s Roméo et Juliette in the role of Mercutio. In the 2022–2023 season, Outlaw performed Schaunard in La bohème with Greensboro Opera, Dizzy Gillespie in Charlie Parker’s Yardbird with New Orleans Opera, and Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro with Opera Omaha. On the concert platform, he made his debut with Boston Baroque as soloist in Messiah, and returned to the Oratorio Society of New York as soloist in J. S. Bach’s B-Minor Mass and the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra for Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

R. Luke Dubois is a composer, artist, and performer who explores the temporal, verbal, and visual structures of cultural and personal ephemera. He holds a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University, and has lectured and taught worldwide on interactive sound and video performance. He has collaborated on interactive performance, installation, and music production with many artists and organizations, including Toni Dove, Todd Reynolds, Chris Mann, Bora Yoon, Michael Joaquin Grey, Matthew Ritchie, Elliott Sharp, Michael Gordon, Maya Lin, Bang on a Can, Engine 27, Harvestworks, and LEMUR in addition to serving as the director of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra for its 2007 season. Stemming from his investigations of “time-lapse phonography,” Dubois’s work is a sonic and encyclopedic relative to time-lapse photography. Just as a long camera exposure fuses motion into a single image, his projects reveal the average sonority, visual language, and vocabulary in music, film, text, or cultural information. Exhibitions of his work have been experienced at the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (Spain), Haus der Elektronischen Künste (Switzerland), 2008 Democratic National Convention, Weisman Art Museum, San José Museum of Art, National Constitution Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Daelim Museum (South Korea), Sundance Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Prospect.2 New Orleans, and Aspen Institute. A major survey of his work, NOW, received its premiere at the Ringling Museum of Art in 2014, with a catalog published by Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers.