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.

Nicholas Buc is a composer, conductor, arranger, violinist and pianist. He studied composition at the University of Melbourne, where he received the inaugural Fellowship of Australian Composers Award. As the recipient of the Brian May Scholarship for Australian film composers, he completed a master’s degree in scoring for film and multimedia at New York University, receiving the Elmer Bernstein Award for Film Scoring. Continuing his passion for music and film, he has conducted the live-in-concert world premieres of John Williams’ Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars: The Last Jedi; Alan Menken’s Beauty and the Beast; Hans Zimmer’s The Lion King; Thomas Newman’s Skyfall; Nicholas Hooper’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; and Alexandre Desplat’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2.