Mahler’s Sixth Symphony With Payare ^2024-2025

Distinguished by innate musicianship, a gift for communication, and an irresistibly joyous spirit, conductor Rafael Payare began playing horn in Venezuela’s El Sistema program at age 14 and started his formal conducting studies in 2004 with José Antonio Abreu. Since winning Denmark’s prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in 2012, his career has advanced rapidly. He was Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra from 2014 to 2019; has served as Principal Conductor of the Castleton Festival, founded by his mentor the late Lorin Maazel, since 2015; became Music Director of the San Diego Symphony in 2019, and three years later became Music Director of Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In recent years, Payare has conducted many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including those of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Zurich, Berlin, Vienna, London, Munich, Hamburg, and Paris, besides making important opera debuts at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the Glyndebourne Festival; Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Opera; and the Royal Danish Opera.

Beth Taylor, One of today’s most electrifying mezzo-sopranos, appears regularly in events and venues such as the Salzburg Festival, BBC Proms, Glyndebourne, Berlin Festival, the opera houses of Zurich, Berlin, Frankfurt and Lyon, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie de Paris, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, and the Palau de la Musica of Barcelona and of Valencia. Her repertoire includes Bradamante (Alcina), Cornelia (Giulio Cesare), Arsace (Semiramide), La Cieca (La Gioconda), Anna (Les Troyens), Erda (Das Rheingold), Mahler’s Second Symphony, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Bach’s B minor Mass. She has worked with Maestros Gardiner, Gardner, Marcon, Metzmacher, Nelson, Pichon and Runnicles. Beth Taylor is a grand finalist of the 2023 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition and the recipient of the 2022 Elizabeth Connell Award.