Join three outstanding global classical conductors - two emerging and one established - as they discuss navigating a life in classical music - with a baton in one hand and so much other stuff in the other. Hear them talk about what it really takes (and means) to succeed in this narrow, highly competitive, yet incredibly exciting field.
Mark Gibson is Principal Instructor of the Miami Classical Music Festival Conducting Institute. He is also director of orchestral studies at the renowned College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), University of Cincinnati, and music director of the CCM Philharmonia Orchestra - and has enjoyed a career that spans three continents. He is presently at work on the long anticipated 8th edition of the classic text, “The Modern Conductor”, for Pearson. In 2017, Oxford University Press released Mr. Gibson’s highly acclaimed book on conducting and musical matters, “The Beat Stops Here.”
Michael Rossi is founder and artistic director of the Miami Classical Music Festival. He has conducted the world's leading organizations including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa. As an opera conductor he made his international debut conducting Plácido Domingo and the Chinese National Opera Orchestra in Beijing in a live television broadcast and his Washington National Opera Main Stage Debut conducting Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. Since then, he has led the Washington National Opera on numerous occasions with performances of La Boheme, two productions of Hansel & Gretel, the first National Endowment of the Arts Opera Honors, and the orchestra’s Strathmore Hall Debut concert. He made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the premiere of Marcos Galvany’s opera Oh My Son and recorded the album.
Javier José Mendoza is Assistant Professor and Orchestra Conductor of the FIU Symphony Orchestra. Mendoza is also Artistic Director of the Chicago Arts Orchestra (CAO) and is active in a movement to unearth and re-debut forgotten works from viceregal Latin America. Mendoza is energetically re-premiering pieces from archives in Mexico, Guatemala, and Spain. Mendoza is one of a few American conductors actively working with an El Sistema-inspired youth orchestra program in Latin America, and he has conducted Opera Maya in Quintana Roo, Mexico and presented the first orchestral concert performed at Tulum, one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya. Mendoza studied at Butler University with Henry Leck and received his Master of Music degree with distinction from the University of New Mexico.
