Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, the distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf is one of today's most highly respected musicians.

Mr. Graf was chosen to be the Music Director of the Houston Symphony in 2000 and began his tenure with the orchestra in September 2001. Prior to his appointment in Houston, he was the music director of the Calgary Philharmonic for eight seasons and held the same post with the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine for six years. He also led the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra from 1984 to 1994.

Hans Graf is a frequent guest with all of the major North American orchestras. His recent and upcoming guest engagements include appearances with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the San Francisco, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Dallas, Baltimore, Vancouver, Atlanta and National symphonies and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra among others. Over the past decade he developed a close relationship with the Boston Symphony and has appeared regularly with the orchestra during the subscription season and at the Tanglewood Music Festival. Mr. Graf made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Houston Symphony in January 2006 and returned to Carnegie leading the Orchestra of St. Luke's in March 2007. He and the Houston Symphony were invited to appear at Carnegie Hall once again in January 2010 at which time they presented the New York premiere of The Planets - An HD Odyssey, featuring exclusive high definition images from NASA's exploration of the solar system accompanied by Holst's famous work, The Planets.

Internationally, Hans Graf conducts in the foremost concert halls of Europe, Japan and Australia. Recent and upcoming international appearances include the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as well as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony and Malaysian Philharmonic. In October 2010, Mr. Graf leads the Houston Symphony on a tour of the UK which includes performances in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester and two performances at the Barbican in London.

Mr. Graf has participated in such prestigious European festivals as the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bregenz and Aix en Provence and appeared at the Salzburg Festival for twelve consecutive seasons. In summer 2010, Graf conducts the opening concert of the Aspen Music Festival and returns to Tanglewood and Chicago's Grant Park Festival.

An experienced opera conductor, Mr. Graf first conducted the Vienna State Opera in 1981 and has since led productions in the opera houses of Berlin, Munich, Paris and Rome among others. His extensive opera repertoire includes several world premieres. Recent opera engagements include Parsifal at the Zurich Opera and Boris Godunov at the Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg.

Born in 1949 near Linz, Hans Graf studied violin and piano as a child. He earned diplomas in piano and conducting from the Musikhochschule in Graz and continued his conducting studies with Franco Ferrara in Siena, Sergiu Celibidache in Bologna and Arvid Jansons in Weimar and Leningrad. Mr. Graf served as the Music Director of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra in Baghdad during the 1975-76 season and the following year began coaching at the Vienna State Opera. His international career was launched in 1979 when he was awarded first prize at the Karl Böhm Competition.

Hans Graf has recorded for the EMI, Orfeo, CBC, Erato, Capriccio and JVC labels and his discography includes the complete symphonies of Mozart and Schubert, the premiere recording of Zemlinsky's opera Es war einmal and the complete works of Dutilleux for BMG Arte Nova. His recordings with the Houston Symphony include works by Bartok and Stravinsky for Koch International, Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony and Berg's Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite for Naxos and a DVD of The Planets - An HD Odyssey, available through the Houston Symphony.

Mr. Graf has been awarded the Chevalier de l'ordre de la Legion d'Honneur by the French government for championing French music around the world as well as the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria.

Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world's leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, many commissioned for him.

An exponent of Busoni's rarely programmed piano concerto, Mr. Ohlsson will bring it to the National Symphony (Washington) and London's Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 2014. 2015 marks the centenary of the death of Alexander Scriabin whose piano music Mr. Ohlsson will present in a series of recitals in London, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. He will also return to the orchestras of San Francisco, Detroit, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Minnesota, BBC Scotland and Prague where he is a frequent guest.

The 2013-14 season included recitals in Montreal, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Kansas City, culminating in February in Carnegie Hall with a program including Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and excerpts from his recording of works of Charles Tomlinson Griffes. In January, he returned to the Boston Symphony to play Lutoslawski's piano concerto, and to the orchestras of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Cleveland. Performances outside North America included Stockholm (Sweden), São Paolo (Brazil), and Hong Kong (China), in addition to a Dvořák project with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer at Lincoln Center.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács and Tokyo string quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. Passionate about singing and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.

Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3, with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, was released in 2011. In the fall of 2008 the English label Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the complete works of Chopin. Hyperion released a disc in 2010 of all the Brahms piano variations and "Goyescas, by Enrique Granados, and music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes. The latest CDs in his ongoing association with Bridge Records are "Close Connections," a recital of 20th-Century pieces, and two CDs of  works by Liszt. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary "The Art of Chopin" co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. Most recently, both Brahms concerti and Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto were released on "live" performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels, and Mr. Ohlsson was featured on Dvorak's piano concerto in the Czech Philharmonic's live recordings of the composer's complete symphonies & concertos, released July of 2014 on the Decca label.

A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School, in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he retains immense personal popularity. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. He is also the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music. He makes his home in San Francisco.

"With her dramatic tumble of red hair and cello-mello voice, Ms. Fischer sings with a passionate restraint that has no equal in her generation. You didn't want her to stop," so said the New York Times following Abigail Fischer's performance of George Benjamin's Upon Silence with St. Luke's Orchestra at New York Philharmonic's Biennial. Ms. Fischer has 'also received praise for her creation of Mrs. X.E. in Du Yun's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel's Bone at Prototype Festival, and Isabelle Eberhardt in Missy Mazzoli's one-woman opera Song from the Uproar with Beth Morrison Projects and the NOW Ensemble.

Following acclaimed performances at Los Angeles Opera and Chautauqua Opera, Ms. Fischer will reprise Isabelle with Beth Morrison Projects at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the 2016-17 season, and with Cincinnati Opera in the summer of 2017. Other engagements in the 2016-17 season include her Italian stage debut in Toshio Hosakawa's The Raven with Orchestra Haydn in Bolzano, Messiah with Duke Chapel Choir and Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass and Maurice Duruflé's Requiem with New York Choral Society, and a program of Vivaldi motets with Mercury Houston.

Known for her "serenely captivating" work in opera "and disarming intimacy" (New York Times), Ms. Fischer recently performed the tile role in alternative productions of Carmen at Colorado Music Festival and Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine. She has sung the title role in The Rape of Lucretia with Opera Memphis, the premiere of Lee Hoiby's This is the Rill Speaking with American Opera Projects, Eötvös' Angels in America with Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Angelina in La cenerentola with Union Avenue (in Italian) and Salt Marsh Opera (in English). Other recent premieres included Mrs. X.E. in Angel's Bone and the Mother in Stefan Weisman's Scarlet Ibis at Prototype Festival. With Gotham Chamber Opera, Ms. Fischer performed Testo in Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Eva in Martinů's Comedy on the Bridge.

A performer of repertoire ranging from contemporary to early music, Ms. Fischer has made a vibrant career as a concert soloist. With the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Ms. Fischer performed semi-staged versions of Strauss' Salome and Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream; and with Columbus Symphony she has performed Lieberson's Neruda Songs. She has worked with American Bach Soloists in programs of Vivaldi's Gloria, Handel's La resurrezione, Porpora's De Profundis clamavi, and Bach's Magnificat; REBEL Baroque Orchestra in Mozart's Mass in C minor and Handel's Messiah; and with Early Music New York in programs of Vivaldi motets. She has performed repertoire with the Kansas City Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and Boston Baroque.

Recordings of Ms. Fischer's includes the operas Song from the Uproar (Missy Mazzoli), The Judgement of Midas (Kamran Ince); the oratorios Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass(Boston Baroque), Katrina Ballads (Ted Hearne); the chamber works Mothertongue (Nico Muhly), The Quality of Mercy (Patrick Castillo), and numerous works of John Zorn.

Originally trained as a cellist, Ms. Fischer has worked often as a chamber musician, from Musicians of Marlboro Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, to St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble. She has premiered works of Elliot Carter and Bernard Rand at Tanglewood Music Festival, Nico Muhly at Lincoln Center, numerous works by John Zorn throughout the world. A graduate of Eastman School of Music (MM), and Vassar College (BA), Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy (Certificate in Italian language and literature); Ms. Fischer now studies with Stephen King in Houston, and lives with her partner in Greenwood Lake, NY.

Karen MacDonald is a Boston native and delighted to be making her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut. Last year, she premiered A Soldier's Carol with the Boston Holiday Pops. Her work this past season included 77% ( Martha's Vineyard Playhouse) Sweet and Sad (Gloucester Stage Co.) Ulysses on Battles  ( Israeli Stage) Red Hot Patriot: The Kick Ass Wit of Molly Ivins (Lyric Stage). On Broadway, she understudied and performed the role of Amanda Wingfield in John Tiffany's recent revival of The Glass Menagerie. Other regional credits include Ether Dome, Ryan Landry's M, Good People, Bus Stop, All My Sons, A Civil War Christmas (Huntington Theatre Co.); That Hopey Changey Thing, Doubt (Stoneham Theatre); Other Desert Cities, The Drowsy Chaperone (Speakeasy Stage); Coriolanus, All's Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Commonwealth Shakespeare Company); Long Day's Journey Into Night, boom (New Repertory Theatre); Superior Donuts (Lyric Stage); The Color of Rose (ArtsEmerson); Two Wives in India  (Boston Playwrights' Theatre); The Blonde, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Moon for the Misbegotten (Merrimack Repertory Theatre); The Snow Queen, Third (Portland Stage) as well as, Hartford Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festival. A founding company member of the American Repertory Theatre, she appeared in 70 productions, including Endgame, The Sea Gull, Mother Courage, Island of Slaves, No Exit, Olly's Prison, Highway Ulysses, Othello, The Imaginary Invalid, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Internationally, she has appeared at festivals in Asti, Avignon, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Israel and the former Yugoslavia. Nationally she has worked extensively, from Philadelphia's Wilma Theatre to Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Her directing credits include Gidion's Knot (Bridge Rep); An Ideal Husband, Woman in Black (Gloucester Stage) and Dressed Up! Wigged Out!! (Boston Playwrights Theatre). She is the recipient of several Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards for her performances. Ms. MacDonald received both the Robert Brustein Award for Sustained Achievement in the Theatre and the Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence in 2010. A graduate of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, she was the Monin Fellow at Boston College 2010-11, and teaches Acting to undergraduates and extension school students at Harvard University.

Will Lyman is well known to Boston audiences for his work with many local theater companies. A founding board member of Commonwealth Shakespeare Co., he has appeared there as Brutus, Prospero, Claudius, and last summer's King Lear. He has also been seen at the Huntington in All My Sons, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Dead End; at New Rep in Long Day's Journey into Night, Exits and Entrances, Clean House, and Ice Breaker; at Speakeasy in The Dying Gaul, at Wheelock in To Kill a Mockingbird, at Boston Playwrights' Theatre in The Wrestling Patient (in collaboration with Speakeasy), King of the Jews, and A Girl's War, and at the Nora in Equus and Operation Epsilon. Elsewhere in the U.S. he has performed with the Denver Center, Hartford Stage, Pennsylvania Stage, American Place, George Street Playhouse, and NJ Shakespeare, as well as in several off-Broadway productions in New York. He has narrated in performances with the National Symphony (Ivan the Terrible) and acted in conjunction with the Cleveland Orchestra (Tom Stoppard/André Previn's Every Good Boy Deserves Favor) and the Handel and Haydn Society (Benda's Medea.) Mr. Lyman is a multiple recipient of both Norton and IRNE awards and was honored with the Howard Keel Award for service to the Screen Actors Guild. He was given 2013's Norton Award for Sustained Excellence and 2015's NETC Award. On television he has appeared in episodes of Crossbow, Hull High, Threat Matrix, and Commander in Chief and in the TV movies Meltdown, Our Fathers, Three Sovereigns for Sarah, and George Washington. Feature film credits include A Perfect Murder, The Siege, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Mystic River, Little Children (narrator), and What Doesn't Kill You. He has narrated the PBS public affairs program Frontline since the second season. On a more whimsical note, he also voices the long-running "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads, and has appeared as himself on The Simpsons.

Bill Barclay, a composer, actor, writer, and director, is the Director of Music at Shakespeares Globe Theatre in London and the first American to join the theatre staff in the company's 17 year history.  A Weston, MA native and Shakespeare specialist, he has composed for the Globe (3 seasons), Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts (11 seasons, company member), the Actors Shakespeare Project in Boston (9 seasons, Resident Acting Company member), and the Tanglewood Music Center (4 seasons).  Bill was a member of the Acting Company at The Mercury Theatre in Colchester, England from 2009-2012, and makes his Broadway debut with this season's Twelfth Night and Richard III, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry, as Music Consultant. Bills original musical works include Call of the Wild,Three Sisters, The Hamlet Symphony, Everyman Found, and The Mad Pirate and the Mermaid; his solo performances include Muse on Fire: Shakespeare & the Music of the Spheres, which has been performed over a dozen times across the US and UK. He has performed roles or composed original scores for The Huntington Theatre, SpeakEasy Stage, W.H.A.T., Central Square Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre, the Vineyard Playhouse, The Olney Theatre Center, Connecticut Rep, La MaMa ETC, and Theater Row (NYC), among others. He has held artist residencies at universities across the country, has taught acting at Emerson College and Boston University, and been a guest lecturer at Harvard University. In addition to recurring roles on Showtime (Brotherhood) and PBS, Bill can be seen in the filmsOcean Boulevard and The Time Machine (DreamWorks). In addition to his work with the BYSO, he has collaborated with the ALEA III Orchestra, the Longwood Symphony Orchestra, and the Aurea Ensemble (which commissioned his latest concert work, Five Sonnets to Orpheus), and is a founding member of The Mahagonny Ensemble in Poughkeepsie, New York. A winner of the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship (the largest grant for actors in the US), and the Boston Globe Monologue Scholarship Competition, he is a two-time Elliot Norton Award nominee for sound design, and has twice received Metlifes Meet the Composer Grants. A 1999 Weston High School grad, Bill is an alumnus of Vassar College and the National Theatre Institute, and earned his MFA at the Boston University School of Theatre. His first books as editor will be published this year: The Plays of Jon Lipsky, Volumes 1 and 2 (Smith & Kraus). www.shakespearealoud.com

ANTONIO WEISSINGER is a 13-years-old and is thrilled to be reprising his most favorite opportunity in Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream with the BSO at Tanglewood. He started entertaining when he was eight-years-old as Tiny Tim in Humbug (a parody of A Christmas Carol). His favorite roles include Ocean State Theater's Billy Elliot (Michael), Hopkinton Middle School's Hamlet (Hamlet), Wheelock Family Theater's Charlotte's Web (Avery/Youth ensemble), Hanover Theatre's A Christmas Carol (Young Scrooge), Dean College's Bye Bye Birdie (Randolph), North Shore Music Theatre's A Christmas Carol (Peter Cratchit), Wheelock's Trumpet of the Swan (Cygnet), NSMT's Les Misérables (Gavroche u/s), Enter Stage Left's Cinderella (Prince), The Jones Unit student film (Ethan), and The Nutcracker (Party Boy). Tony done commercials for Legos and VISA. He also enjoys singing and has been a finalist in NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) in both Boston and Rhode Island (1st in Classical, 2nd in Musical Theatre), selected for Districts, he has been a featured singer in the Light Up the Night 300th anniversary of Hopkinton, featured soloist at Boston Association of Cabaret Artist's (BACA) 20th anniversary and BACA Youth Development Performance Showcase and has offered his talents to perform at local assistant living facilities and nursing homes. He is so thankful to Bill Barclay, Anthony Fogg, the BSO, and the entire talented cast and crew associated with this magical production. He is also thankful for all his opportunity, and to his family, educators, and friends for their support and encouragement.