The Grammy Award-winning Minnesota Orchestra, led by Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård—who is serving as music director designate during the 2022-23 season—is recognized for distinguished performances around the world, award-winning recordings and broadcasts, educational engagement programs, and commitment to building the orchestral repertoire of the future. Founded in 1903, the Orchestra has an extensive history of touring throughout Minnesota, nationally and abroad, including high-profile visits in recent years to Cuba, Europe and South Africa. Recording projects undertaken in the past two decades include complete cycles of symphonies by Beethoven, Sibelius and Mahler, all recorded under Osmo Vänskä, who is now the Orchestra’s conductor laureate.

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.

The Moving Company is devoted to creating new and imaginative theatre that is grounded in the present, rooted in its creators’ shared past, and always questioning the possible. They pursue a unique vocabulary using improvisation and play, space, image, movement, language and music to investigate the poetic and human. Locally, their work includes Anamnesis, Speechless, Liberty Falls, Come Hell and High Water and Refugia with the Guthrie Theater. Nationally, they have been seen at Berkeley Repertory Theater, South Coast Rep, the Shakespeare Theater, D.C., and Playmakers Rep, as well as teaching residencies at Stanford University, University of Texas at Austin, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota and Gustavus Adolphus College.

Paris native Dominique Serrand, who is co-artistic director of The Moving Company, was artistic director and one of the co-founders of Theatre de la Jeune Lune from 1978 to 2008. He studied at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He has acted, conceived, directed, and designed sets, lights and video for most productions of Jeune Lune and The Moving Company for over 30 years, concentrating primarily on directing. He has also staged several operas. He has directed on stages such as Berkeley Rep, Playmakers, La Jolla Playhouse, Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, the Guthrie Theater, Children’s Theatre Company, the Alley Theatre, and the Shakespeare Theatre Company of D.C., amongst others. His awards include 2006 Best Production honors for The Miser in Boston, Houston, San Diego, Minneapolis and San Francisco; a 2005 Tony Award for Best Regional Theater; and being named a 2005 USA ARTIST Fellow, Ford and Bush Fellow. He has also been knighted by the French Government in the order of Arts and Letters.

Nathan Keepers, producing artistic director of The Moving Company, has co-created many works including Out of the Pan Into the Fire, Werther and Lotte, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Come Hell and High Water, Every Sentence Is For The Birds, Liberty Falls, 54321, Speechless, The 4 Seasons, What If, Anamnesis and Refugia at the Guthrie. He was a company member at Theatre de la Jeune Lune for 11 seasons. He has also performed locally at the Guthrie, the Jungle Theater, Ten Thousand Things Theater, Sod House Theater, Children’s Theatre Company and Augsburg Varsity Theater. Beyond Minnesota he has worked with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Playmakers Repertory, American Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Rep, the Alley Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, The Folger Theatre and Shakespeare Theatre Company of D.C. He has studied with Pierre Byland and Philippe Gaulier.

Sarah Agnew is an actor, writer, teacher, director and producer based in Minneapolis. As a former company member of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, she collaborated on more than 15 productions and appeared in national tours of both Tartuffe and Hamlet. She has created and co-directed new work at Open Eye Figure Theater, the Guthrie and the Southern Theater. She has performed at Yale Repertory Theater, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, Mixed Blood, Sod House, Alley, Ten Thousand Things, the Guthrie and others companies and venues. She is currently a producer of new television content for Children’s Hospitals’ in-house TV channel. This fall she’ll be developing, directing and appearing in Sod House Theater’s new piece, Table.

Steven Epp is an actor, writer and co-artistic director of The Moving Company. His acting and writing credits include The House Can’t Stand, Come Hell and High Water, Out of the Pan Into the Fire, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Liberty Falls, Speechless, The 4 Seasons, What If, Anamnesis, Imaginary Invalid at Playmakers, Massoud for Center Theatre Group, L.A. Tartuffe at South Coast Rep, and Refugia at the Guthrie. His credits include productions at the Guthrie, Children’s Theatre Company, Ten Thousand Things Theater, the Jungle Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Trinity Repertory Theatre, the Spoleto Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Alley Theatre, The Old Globe, Center-Stage, Berkeley Rep, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Seattle Rep, and the New Victory Theatre, as well as Theatre for a New Audience, off-Broadway. He was an actor, writer and co-artistic director at Theatre de la Jeune Lune from 1983 to 2008. He has co-authored numerous plays including Children of Paradise, winner of the 1993 Outer-Critics Circle Award for best new play. He has been a Fox Fellow, McKnight Playwrights’ Center Theatre Artist Fellow and a Beinecke Fellow, Yale University, and won the 2012 Helen Hayes Award for Best Actor, and a 2017 Ivey Award.

Violist Sam Bergman joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 2000. Born in Boston, he grew up primarily in small-town Pennsylvania, studying violin and viola with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra. He attended Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, studying viola with Jeffrey Irvine and Lynne Ramsey, and was a member of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra before coming to Minneapolis. Since 2005, he has produced, written and hosted more than 40 original narrated shows for the Minnesota Orchestra, many with conductor Sarah Hicks for the Orchestra’s Inside the Classics series.