Ariana Kim, one of three hosts and writers for the 2022-23 season of This Is Minnesota Orchestra, the Emmy Award-winning Twin Cities PBS broadcast and online livestream series, is an acclaimed violinist and a tenured professor at Cornell University. Her career has brought her around the world—performing across the country in San Francisco, New Orleans and New York City, and abroad in South Korea, Italy and beyond. Although currently based in New York, she continues to maintain Minnesota ties as she leads the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota as co-artistic director and returns for appearances on popular series like Liquid Music and The Great Northern. She earned a 2019 Grammy nomination with the Aizuri Quartet and has served as acting concertmaster of the Louisiana Philharmonic, performs with the New York-based musical collective The Knights and was a member of the new music ensemble Ne(x)tworks for 10 seasons. At age 16 she made her debut with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart’s Fifth Violin Concerto. In 2021 she taught as a visiting artist at Seoul National University.

William Eddins has a multifaceted musical career as a conductor and pianist. He is the music director emeritus of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, a former associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and a frequent guest conductor of major orchestras throughout the world. In September 2022 he will conduct the Minnesota Orchestra’s season opening subscription concerts for the first time, leading a program that includes Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony with the combined forces of the Minnesota Orchestra, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Marsalis himself on trumpet.

Sarah Hicks is the Minnesota Orchestra’s principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall, a role in which she oversees planning for and conducts many concerts in the broad-spectrum series of popular music, jazz, Broadway classics, movie scores and other genres. She also conducted the Inside the Classics and Sam & Sarah series for ten seasons.

Hicks’ career has seen collaborations with a diverse range of artists, from Hilary Hahn and Dmitri Hvorostovsky to Rufus Wainwright, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson. She has been an artistic leader in concerts featuring artists from Minnesota’s internationally-renowned popular music scene—including shows with The New Standards, multiple sold-out performances with Dessa and a live-in-concert recording released on Doomtree Records, and collaborations with indie band Cloud Cult. A specialist in film music and the film in concert genre, she is passionate about creating concert experiences which combine sight and sound, and that welcome new audiences to the orchestral genre.