Corcoran Concerto Competition

American-Canadian violinist Benjamin Bowman is the Concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera. He is a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and until 2017 he was also Concertmaster of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra. Benjamin is very active and engaged as a chamber musician, recitalist and soloist. He regularly performs in concerts and festivals in Europe and North America. He was nominated for a 2017 Grammy for his recording with the ARC (Artists of the Royal Conservatory) Ensemble (‘The Chamber Works of Jerzy Fitelberg’) and was also featured on the 2013 Juno-winning album ‘Levant’ with the Amici Chamber Ensemble. Other collaborative work includes extensive immersion in contemporary music, improvisation and performance with singer/songwriters. His discography includes recent solo and chamber-music releases on the CHANDOS, Sony Masterworks/RCA Red Seal, ATMA Classique, and Innova labels. Bowman received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.  Benjamin plays a very fine Nicolò Bergonzi from Cremona, ca 1780.

Brett Polegato's artistic sensibility has earned him the highest praise from audiences and critics: “his is a serious and seductive voice” says The Globe and Mail, and The New York Times has praised him for his “burnished, well-focused voice” which he uses with “considerable intelligence and nuance.” The Italian-Canadian baritone appears regularly on the world's most distinguished stages, including those of Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the Concertgebouw, the Opéra National de Paris, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Teatro Real, Roy Thomson Hall, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall and Wigmore Hall. One of today’s most sought-after lyric baritones on the operatic stage, Brett has made a name for himself in several dramatic roles, most notably the title roles in Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin, which his has sung at the Canadian Opera Company, the New Israeli Opera, Grange Park Opera and Vancouver Opera, and Scarpia in Puccini’s Tosca for Grange Park Opera (UK). In January 2023, he created the title role in the Canadian premiere of Mason Bates’ The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. In 2019, Brett made his long-awaited debut at the Metropolitan opera in Massenet’s Manon. The final performance was broadcast live in cinemas around the world and was later televised on PBS’s Great Performances. In 2024, Mr. Polegato became a recipient of an Opera Canada Ruby Award.

Performer, curator and on-stage host, James Austin Smith “proves that an oboist can have an adventurous solo career.” (New Yorker). Praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances (New York Times), Smith appears regularly at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York City and at leading national and international chamber music festivals, at Carnegie Hall and on tour as Co-Principal Oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As Artistic and Executive Director of Tertulia Chamber Music Smith creates intimate evenings of food, drink, and music designed to engage audiences hungry for singular cultural experiences in New York, San Francisco and Serenbe, Georgia, as well as an annual weekend festival of food and music in a variety of global destinations. He serves as Artistic Advisor to Coast Live Music, a new home for chamber music in the San Francisco Bay Area. He mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University and as a regular guest at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. James Austin Smith holds a master’s degree from the Yale School of Music and bachelor’s degrees in political science and music from Northwestern University. He spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, and is an alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect. Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Smith’s principal teachers are Stephen Taylor, Christian Wetzel, Humbert Lucarelli, and Ray Still.

Pianist Stéphane Lemelin is well-known to audiences throughout Canada and regularly tours in the United States, Europe and Asia as soloist and chamber musician. His repertory is vast, with a predilection for the German Classical and Romantic literature and a particular affinity for French music, as evidenced by his more than twenty-five recordings, which include works by Fauré, Saint-Saëns, debussy, Poulenc and Roussel. Stéphane Lemelin is director of the French music series "Découvertes 1890-1939" on the Atma Classique label, dedicated to the rediscovery of neglected early twentieh-century French repertoire and for which he has recorded works by Samazeuilh, Ropartz, Pierné, Migot, Dupont, Dubois, Rhené-Bâton, Rosenthal, Alder, Lekeu, and Vierne. His latest recording features the complete works for violin and piano by Gyorgy Catoire, with violinist Laurence Kayaleh, and was released on the Naxos label in 2016. Stéphane Lemelin studied with Yvonne Hubert in Montreal, Karl-Ulrich Schnabel in New York, and received both Bacholer's and Master's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory as a student of Leon Fleisher. He holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, where his teachers were Boris Berman and Claude Frank. He was a professor at the University of Alberta and the University of Ottawa, where he also served as Director of the School of Music from 2007 to 2012. He is now Chair of the Department of Performance and Professor of Piano at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. A dedicated pedagogue, he has been invited to give master classes around the world. Stéphane Lemelin was a member of Trio Hochelaga from 2003 to 2012 and the founder and artistic director of the Prince Edward County Music Festival from 2004 to 2017.

Noted for her “dazzling, virtuoso singing” (Boston Globe), soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon delights in the range of sonic possibility inherent in the human voice. With a repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the present day, she specializes in the dusty corners of the canon – giving modern premieres of rediscovered works from the Baroque through the mid-20^th century – and is sought-out for her collaborations with today’s composers. Ms. Fitz Gibbon has appeared as soloist with ensembles such as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and American Symphony Orchestra, and debuts with the Hong Kong Philharmonic this spring. An avid chamber musician, recent collaborators include the Aizuri and Brentano String Quartets, Merz Trio, violinist Alexi Kenny, and flutist Marina Piccinini, as well as her husband and collaborative partner, pianist Ryan McCullough. In the 24-25 season, she performs new works by Katherine Balch, Tan Dun, Helmut Lachenmann, and Elizabeth Ogonek, among others. A graduate of GGS, Lucy serves on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory and has been in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival annually since 2016. She is honored to be the recipient of a 2024 Fellowship from the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, whose generous support will enable upcoming commissioning, recording, and performance projects.

Clarinetist Todd Palmer is a three-time Grammy nominee and has appeared as soloist, recitalist, chamber music collaborator, educator, arranger, and presenter in a variety of musical endeavors around the world. As a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and grand prize winner in the Ima Hogg Young Artist Auditions, he has appeared as soloist with many symphony and chamber orchestras including those of Houston, Atlanta, St. Paul, Cincinnati, Montréal, BBC Scotland, Santa Fe Chamber; and has given recital performances at Weill Hall and the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and Suntory Hall in Tokyo. He has collaborated with some of the world's most renowned artists and ensembles such as the St. Lawrence, Brentano, Borromeo, Jupiter, Chiara, Lark, and Pacifica string quartets; and sopranos Kathleen Battle, Renée Fleming, Elizabeth Futral, Heidi Grant Murphy and Dawn Upshaw. He has championed and recorded Osvaldo Golijov’s klezmer clarinet quintet, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind; commissioned Ricky Gordon’s theatre work, Orpheus and Euridice, presented  by Great Performers at Lincoln Center; and also premiered David Bruce’s Gumboots at Carnegie Hall. His festival appearances include Spoleto USA, Bravo! Vail Valley, Music@Menlo, La Jolla, Portland, Vancouver, Rockport, Banff, Manchester, Marlboro, and Tanglewood, where he received the Leonard Bernstein fellowship as a student. Mr. Palmer appeared as soloist in director Robert La Page's staging of The Nightingale and Other Fables at BAM, and gave the world premiere of Crosswalk, a new work for clarinet and dance especially created for him by choreographer Mark Morris. He has also worked directly with numerous composers including Osvaldo Golijov, Thomas Adès, David Bruce, Ricky Ian Gordon, Christopher Rouse, Mason Bates, Ned Rorem, and George Tsontakis. His Broadway credits include South Pacific, The King & I, Les Misérables, Sunset Boulevard, My Fair Lady and Sweeney Todd, where he recently appeared with members of the cast on NPR's Tiny Desk.

Nicholas Kitchen is one of the most active and innovative performers in the music world today. He is a solo violinist, chamber musician, teacher, video artist, technology innovator and arts administrator. At 16, Nicholas began studying at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. At Curtis, he worked with David Cerone and coached with such musicians as Felix Galimir and Mieczslaw Horsowski, but very importantly he spent five years working intensively with the great violinist and conductor Szymon Goldberg, as well as being included in the conducting courses of Otto Werner Mueller. At the end of his studies at Curtis in 1989, Nicholas joined his schoolmates and founded the Borromeo String Quartet that went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Very quickly the quartet won prizes at the Evian International Quartet Competition and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York. Ever since these first successes, the quartet has been in great demand, performing regularly 100 concerts a year. The Quartet also received the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the Martin S. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant. At the end of his studies at Curtis in 1989, Nicholas joined his schoolmates and founded the Borromeo String Quartet that went on to study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Very quickly the quartet won prizes at the Evian International Quartet Competition and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York. Ever since these first successes, the quartet has been in great demand, performing regularly 100 concerts a year. The Quartet also received the Cleveland Quartet Award from Chamber Music America, the Martin S. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, and the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Nicholas has played for many years on the A.J. Fletcher Stradivarius a violin purchased for long term loan to Nicholas by the A.J. Fletcher Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the present situation where Nicholas is able to play the Goldberg instrument, the Foundation has graciously allowed the violin to be used by Kristopher Tong, the second violinist of the Borromeo Quartet.

Pianist and curator Pedja Mužijević has defined his career with creative programming and lasting collaborations with artists and ensembles performing with the Atlanta Symphony, Dresden Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, Residentie Orkest in The Hague, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Shinsei Nihon Orchestra in Tokyo. Pedja has played solo recitals at Alice Tully Hall, 92NY and The Frick Collection in New York, Terrace Theater at Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks and Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, Casals Hall and Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo. Pedja’s interdisciplinary projects include touring with Mikhail Baryshnikov throughout the United States, South America, Europe and Asia and with Simon Keenlyside in Trisha Brown’s staged version of Schubert’s Winterreise at Lincoln Center in New York, Barbican in London, La Monnaie in Brussels, Opera National de Paris, as well as Holland, Lucerne and Melbourne festivals. Pedja is the artistic advisor for Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana, artistic administrator at Baryshnikov Arts in New York, and he also directs workshops around the world, from Verbier Festival Academy and Banff Center to Colburn and Longy schools, in which he looks at the concert experience, both in programming and presentation, in an attempt to make it more accessible and relevant today.