World-Class Guest Conductors Setting the Tempo in 2022-23 Season

At the beginning of September, Osmo Vänskä officially became conductor laureate. Thomas Søndergård conducts a set of October 2022 concerts and then assumes his role as the Minnesota Orchestra’s eleventh music director in September 2023. So, you might be wondering who exactly will be taking the podium at Orchestra Hall this coming season.

Fortunately, the ensemble will be in expert artistic hands. Alongside Sarah Hicks—the principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall who is entering her 17th season with the Orchestra—a rotating cast of 30 world-class guest conductors will lead the ensemble from September to June, with even more to come next summer. Each will bring their unique styles and repertoires to Minnesota audiences—some for the very first time. Learn more about eight of these conductors below.

Sir Donald Runnicles

Runnicles is no stranger to Orchestra Hall, but it’s been more than two decades since the Scottish conductor has led the Orchestra in concert. Now serving as the general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival, Runnicles conducts his celebrated interpretations of Romantic repertoire on October 13-15, in concerts punctuated by the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams as well as a recent work by contemporary composer Carlos Simon dedicated to Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

Scott Yoo

The chief conductor of the Mexico City Philharmonic, Yoo is also known for hosting the PBS classical music series Now Hear This. He has become a trusted partner of the Minnesota Orchestra, leading the ensemble in recording sessions for the Listening Project—an initiative aimed at recording orchestral works by under-represented composers—in 2021. Yoo returns in November for a concert that features Ulysses Kay’s Concerto for Orchestra—one of the pieces featured in those earlier recording sessions.

Ahmed Anzaldúa

Anzaldúa will make his Minnesota Orchestra conducting debut this holiday season alongside Border CrosSing, a choir he founded in 2017. Entitled El Mesías (The Messiah), the bilingual Spanish-English program will be performed December 9 and 10 at Orchestra Hall, before the ensemble visits Church of the Ascension in North Minneapolis for an afternoon performance on December 11. This pay-what-you-can performance at the church is emblematic of Anzaldúa's musical vision: “a landscape where singers and audiences more closely reflect the racial and cultural composition of the Twin Cities.”

Marin Alsop

The first and only conductor to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, Alsop serves as conductor laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. A frequent guest at Orchestra Hall since 1993, she will ring in 2023 alongside pianist Awadagin Pratt in concerts that feature old favorites by Leonard Bernstein and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and the Minnesota premiere of Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds for Piano and Orchestra, which was commissioned for and premiered by Pratt earlier in 2022—an adventurous and passionate program that Alsop can best bring to light.

Ryan Bancroft

Bancroft earned critical acclaim as “one of the most promising and vibrant young conductors of our time” when he was appointed as the next chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic—a post he’ll begin in 2023. Before assuming his new role, Bancroft will make his Minnesota Orchestra debut in performances that feature Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Solemn Prelude, Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and the eagerly anticipated return of pianist Kirill Gerstein in Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto—classical works to be reinvigorated through Bancroft’s fresh perspective.

Dalia Stasevska

Also making a debut is Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska. She serves as chief conductor of Lahti Symphony Orchestra—a symphony familiar to Minnesota Orchestra fans, as Osmo Vänskä directed that same ensemble from 1988 to 2008. Stasevska brings her eclectic repertoire—which blends standards and forgotten works, past and present from across the world—to the now-storied symphony. Her appearance at Orchestra Hall in February showcases her range of musical interests and presents two pieces new to the Minnesota Orchestra: Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) by one of our most accomplished Composer Institute alumni, Missy Mazzoli, and William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya

A masterful conductor and passionate educator, Harth-Bedoya has made his musical home in Texas, where he both serves as music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and leads Baylor University’s Orchestral Studies program. Known for his diverse range of repertoire, the Peruvian-born conductor will focus in on the works of Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodály in his June concerts in Minnesota, leading two of Kodály’s arrangements before embarking on Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera’s Harp Concerto with soloist Grace Roepke, a native of Chanhassen, Minnesota, who is the first harpist ever to win FRIENDS of the Minnesota Orchestra’s Young Artist Competition.

André Raphel

Conductor laureate of West Virginia’s Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, Raphel is a familiar presence on the podium at concert halls throughout the United States, working with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and St. Louis Symphony and making recent guest appearances alongside the Detroit Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony and San Antonio Symphony, among many other ensembles. He’ll find his way back to Minnesota in June for a set of concerts commemorating Juneteenth that feature scores by African American composers across three centuries.