Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship Announces 2026-28 Fellow, Associate Fellow, and Award Recipients

New partnerships launching with Reno Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra

Mentees chosen for the 2026 and 2027 TACF Mentorship Program, supported by the Sherman Family Foundation

Click here to download headshots of 2026–28 Fellow, Associate Fellow, and Award Recipients

January 15, 2026

Today, the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship (TACF) proudly announces that Taiwanese conductor Chi-Yuan Lin has been chosen as the 2026–28 TACF Fellow. In a competitive cycle with nearly 150 applicants representing 41 nationalities, the TACF also names Michelle Di Russo as Associate Fellow, and Joséphine Korda, Polina Lebedieva, Ziwei Ma, and Molly Turner as Award Recipients. The Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship is a two-year award that includes intensive coaching and mentoring with Marin Alsop and other music industry professionals. The TACF honorarium for Fellows is $30,000 over two years; other awards are distributed on a merit basis. Since 2003, 42 women conductors have been chosen to participate in the program. The TACF Mentoring Program was established in 2022 and has added 50 additional women conductors to the TACF.

“Since launching the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in 2002, I have been impressed and inspired by the talent, dedication, and creativity of the women who apply. Their level of expertise and accomplishment rises exponentially every application cycle.” said Marin Alsop, TACF Founder and one of the foremost conductors of our time. “In the nearly 25 years since its founding, I have watched the TACF blossom into a community of women who support each other professionally as well as personally. It’s especially gratifying to see that, among the 2026–28 cohort, three conductors — including the Fellow and Associate Fellow — are past participants in the TACF Mentoring Program, a testament to the important contribution TACF is making to conductors’ growth in multiple phases of their careers. I’m proud and thrilled to welcome this year’s class of Fellows, Award Recipients, and Mentees to the TACF family.”

Chi-Yuan Lin, the TACF 2026–28 Fellow

Born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, Chi-Yuan Lin is currently serving in the Conductor position with the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center Ensemble.  This season at Lyric she will work on Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci, Salome, and Madama Butterfly, and will also return for another season as Music Director and Conductor of the Avanti Orchestra in Washington, DC. Previous engagements include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Hartford Symphony Orchestra, São Paulo Symphony Orchestra, and Peabody Opera Theatre. She received her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from National Taiwan Normal University and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. She was a 2023–24 Mentee in the TACF Mentoring Program.

“It’s an unbelievable honor to be selected as the 2026 Fellow of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship,” Lin said. “I have long cherished the TACF as a truly special organization. It offers generous, hands-on guidance while creating space, opportunity, and a strong support system as we navigate our future careers. I am especially excited for the opportunity to work with orchestras around the world, to learn through meaningful mentorship with Marin Alsop, and to grow alongside other inspiring female conductors. Music has carried me through difficult moments in life, and as a conductor, I feel deeply fortunate to share passion and joy and to bring people together. As a TACF Fellow, I hope to pass this light on and bring strength and belief wherever I go.”

Clockwise from top left: Polina Lebedieva, Michelle Di Russo, Ziwei Ma, Joséphine Korda, and Molly Turner

Argentinian-Italian conductor Michelle Di Russo is currently Music Director of the Delaware Symphony and Associate Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony. She was a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and a two-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award. This season’s highlights include guest conducting debuts with Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Calgary Philharmonic, and Toledo Ballet. She was a TACF Mentee in 2023–24.

British conductor Joséphine Korda is the top prize winner of the Neeme Järvi Prize at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival 2025, receiving invitations to conduct in four Swiss-German orchestras in the 2026-27 season. She has conducted orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic, The Philharmonia, and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra. Equally at home in the theatre, she conducts at Northern Ballet, Opera Holland Park, and is currently Conductor in Residence at the Academie de l’Opéra de Paris.

Polina Lebedieva is assistant conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris. In July 2023, she was a semi-finalist (Top 5) in the Mahler Competition in Bamberg, Germany, and in June 2024, she reached the semi-finals of the International Conducting Competition in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She has also worked with the Berner Symphonieorchester, the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra, and L’Orchestre du Pays Basque, among others.

Born and raised in Beijing, China, Ziwei Ma is currently the Conducting Fellow at the New World Symphony. She recently served as Cover Conductor for The Philadelphia Orchestra (under Stéphane Denève) and appeared as Offstage Conductor with members of the orchestra in performances of Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. Ma also served as a conducting fellow at the Lakes Area Music Festival and has been invited to return in 2026.

Molly Turner served as Conducting Fellow of New World Symphony during the 2023–24 and 2024–25 seasons, and was also a Dudamel Fellow with Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2024–25. Highlights of the current season include return engagements with the LA Phil, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris, as well as debuts with Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and Opera Grand Rapids. In addition to conducting, Turner is also a composer and plays violin, viola, and piano. She was a TACF Mentee in 2023–24.

New and continuing partnerships with U.S. and international orchestras

This year, the TACF solidifies exciting partnerships with multiple international orchestras that will provide additional opportunities for the TACF network of conductors. These orchestras are: the Reno Phil in Reno, NV; the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra in South Africa; and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR) in Katowice, Poland.

The Reno Phil, with support from Charlotte and Dick McConnell, launches the annual McConnell Conducting Fellowship in the 2026–27 season. In partnership with the TACF, the Reno Phil will choose some of its fellows each year from the Taki community; additional details to be announced. “The Reno Phil is proud to partner with the Taki Alsop Fellowship to expand opportunities for emerging conductors,” said Reno Phil Music Director Laura Jackson, the TACF 2004 Fellow. “Marin Alsop’s mentorship and the strength of the Taki community have played a meaningful role in my own journey. It’s deeply important to me to use my work at the Reno Phil to help support and elevate the next generation.”

The KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, two leading South African orchestras, will offer conducting residencies for TACF conductors. “The KwaZulu-Natal and Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestras are proud to meaningfully contribute to the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship, which fosters talented women conductors through active mentorship,” said Bongani Tembe, Chief Executive and Artistic Director of both orchestras.

TACF and the NOSPR — where Alsop serves as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor — have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration going back several seasons; the orchestra has hired numerous TACF alumni for guest conducting engagements, and invites two TACF conductors each season to participate in its annual week of masterclasses, led by Alsop. 

TACF Mentoring Program, supported by the Sherman Family Foundation

In 2022, the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship launched its Mentoring Program, which provides 10 free mentoring sessions with TACF alumni. Initially funded by AT&T in 2022, the program has since accepted 50 conductors and continues to expand with the generous support of the Sherman Family Foundation.

Through the Mentoring Program, TACF expands its network of women conductors and collects research and data to create a mentoring model for the future. As evidenced by the 2026–28 class of Fellows and Award Recipients, past Mentees can reapply for the Fellowship and are frequently chosen for higher level awards.

The 2026 class of Mentees includes: Sara Aldana, Ying Lam Chu, Jeanne Cousin, Claudia Fuller, Nina Haug, Guro Ansteensen Haugli, Sohye Jung, Michal Oren, Damali Willingham, and Naomi Woo. Their mentorship period runs from January 1 to December 31, 2026. 

The 2027 class of Mentees includes: Katarine Araujo, Maria Bazou, Yudania Gómez Heredia, Nadia Kisseleva, Fang-Ju Kuo, Mojca Lavrenčič, Heeseong Lee, Chloé Meyzie, Gabriela Opacka-Boccadoro, and Leanna Mei-Ling Puttick. Their mentorship period runs from January 1 to December 31, 2027. 

About the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship

In 2002, Marin Alsop, with the support of Tomio Taki, created the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship in order to mentor, support, and promote women conductors as they advance in their professional careers. Since 2003, 42 women conductors have been chosen to participate in the program. The TACF Mentoring Program was established in 2022 and has added 50 additional women conductors to the TACF. All are working to ensure a more equitable future in classical music through their artistry and advocacy. Among them, 32 Music Director/Chief Conductor titles are held with orchestras around the world.

The selection process for the 2026–28 Fellow and other award recipients included a thorough application, conducting videos, a personal statement video, references, and interviews for the finalists. In addition to Alsop and the TACF staff, other esteemed conductors and industry leaders also assessed the finalists and provided observations. Learn more at takialsop.org. 

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Media contact:

Caroline Finane
8VA Music Consultancy
+49 152 2706 3037
caroline@8vamusicconsultancy.com

The Pacific Has No Memory

Everything changed on January 7, 2025

I never imagined we would evacuate our home in the Palisades—a place alive with laughter, music, and the joyful chaos of my husband, our two young daughters, and crazy rescue dog—never to return.

So many dear friends lost everything: cherished family heirlooms, photographs, instruments, and music libraries that had taken a lifetime to build—all vanished in moments. That evening, from our hotel window, I watched the fires rage through the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains and sobbed, completely helpless.

Yet from the ash and destruction, something profoundly beautiful emerged—much like the glowing fairy at the end of Fantasia, rising from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite.

I commissioned Eric Whitacre to write a new work for violin and orchestra, and as the world changed, so did his composition. Little did I know that The Pacific Has No Memory would be born from these epic tragedies. This music has become salve for the soul—a warm, healing embrace for my broken heart. Tender and profound, it radiates love, hope, and renewal.

I am eternally grateful to Eric Whitacre for creating this musical prayer and to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for breathing life into it together. This recording is dedicated to all who were affected by the Los Angeles fires, and to the brave first responders who risked everything to save lives.

- Anne Akiko Meyers

Shepherd School of Music Profiled for Houston Business Journal

Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow

Matthew Loden, Dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, recently spoke with Janet Miranda from the Houston Business Journal on significant moments in the school’s history and his vision for the future. He cites faculty members such as Larry Rachleff, former director of orchestras, and Stephen King and Richard Bado from the opera program as turning points for the success of the Shepherd School. “If you were going to study the clarinet and you wanted to win an audition with an orchestra,” Loden says, “then you knew that you wanted to go to the Shepherd School to try and learn what you needed to about taking auditions, understanding the repertoire, the music and then learning how to play in a large ensemble.”

Loden emphasizes the importance of bringing in new faculty members “at the height of their professional game,” such as David Chan, former concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, who was hired as Professor of Violin in April of 2025. Other current projects include a Mind, Music and Body Laboratory, led by composer and professor Anthony Brandt, which studies the intersection of creativity and brain plasticity during performance. 

In his vision for the future of the Shepherd School, Loden sees more opportunities to connect with the community, building deeper relationships with arts organizations in Houston and beyond. Last year, Shepherd hosted a community day, which attracted more than 3,000 attendees. The next iteration happens in February and will include a family concert performed by Shepherd students. 

Read the full article here. 

Photo Credit: Brandon Martin

Musicus Fest Celebrated in Classical Voice North America

Photo Credit: Keith Hiro

Founded in 2010 by siblings Trey Lee and Chui-Inn Lee, Musicus promotes international, cross-cultural collaboration through musical performances and educational initiatives in Hong Kong. One of such projects is Musicus Fest, which combines the talents of top-tier young professionals from Hong Kong alongside musicians from around the world. 

James Bash from Classical Voice North America attended the family concert and the festival finale, featuring works by Locatelli, Tartini, Vivaldi, and Beethoven. Soloists for the finale program included Lee himself, Finnish violinist Minna Pensola, and the Musicus Soloists Hong Kong in collaboration with Angela Chan and Jacque Forestier, co-winners of the 2024 Joseph Joachim Violin Competition. The program also featured string orchestra arrangements of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies Nos. 1 and 3 accompanied by flow artist Chris Lam.

“Overall the ensemble playing was tight and precise and made the quicksilver runs sparkle,” reports Bash. “Superbly crafted dynamics enhanced the music-making, and the performance generated sustained acclamation from concertgoers.” In response to the recent devastating fires in Hong Kong, the festival artists paid tribute with Piazzolla’s Ave Maria. 

Read the full article here. 

Photo Credit: Keith Hiro

Storytelling at the Symphony: Ian Niederhoffer on The Best is Noise

Photo Credit: Rebecca Fay

Conductor Ian Niederhoffer recently appeared on Ben Gambuzza’s The Best Is Noise podcast, which explores the versatility and expansiveness of classical music. They discussed Parlando, the New York City-based chamber orchestra that Niederhoffer founded in 2019, whose mission is to provide intimate and accessible musical experiences through storytelling. For Gambuzza, Parlando is reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. “No one can compare with Bernstein,” Gambuzza says, “but perhaps Bernstein’s experiment wasn’t a one-off achievement to be eulogized, but a genre unto itself: the learning concert.”

Parlando concerts are defined by spoken interludes, where Niederhoffer contextualizes each piece within an overarching theme. For instance, their most recent concert performance, “Crossing Over,” examined the influence of jazz rhythms and harmonies in 20th-century classical music using works by Shostakovich, Ellington, and Nikolai Kapustin. Niederhoffer, both a skilled conductor and charismatic speaker, weaves a narrative from the podium that resonates with all types of listeners and builds on their existing knowledge, resulting in greater appreciation and understanding of the music at hand.

Listen to the full episode here. 

Photo Credit: Rebecca Fay

The Music of Now: Alexander Shelley on San Francisco Classical Voice

Photo Credit: Doug Gifford

Victoria Looseleaf from San Francisco Classical Voice recently chatted with Alexander Shelley during his first weekend of concerts with the Pacific Symphony as artistic and music director designate. He will become the third music director in the ensemble’s history, following his departure from the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa at the end of this season. Shelley spoke about his approach for working with an ensemble, particularly in the role of music director. “The most important thing in my life is to build the sound of an orchestra, to build the personality of the orchestra, to build the way we make music – the flexibility, the breadth of music we make together.” Ultimately, his goal is to connect with audiences, equating the concert hall to “a religious and spiritual space,” where listeners can connect with “another part of being and consciousness that is ever more important.”

Looseleaf notes Shelley’s penchant for mixing canonical and contemporary repertoire. “All the music we love from the past was written in response to its time,” he said. “The manifestations of life, they kind of vary…But the underscoring motivations of life and the underscoring questions [of] life and hope, loss and mystery, all those things that are actually the nuts and bolts of our interactions with the material world, they have not changed a jot.” Shelley argues that the solution is “to juxtapose the music of then with the music of now.”

Read the full interview here.

Photo Credit: Doug Gifford

Curtis Opera Theatre Profiled in Opera Now

Photo Credits (left to right): Pete Checchia, Wide Eyed Studios

The Curtis Institute was founded in 1924 by Mary Louise Curtis Bok, who “had a bold vision for the music landscape at the time: to create a conservatory where the most promising young musicians could develop their talents without financial barriers.” It boasts a small enrollment of 160, comprising only 25 vocal and opera students. “Because Curtis is smaller, undergraduates and graduate students and post-graduate students all work together in one cohort,” says Miloš Repický, director of the opera department. “They take studio class together, they take acting classes together, they take movement together. They’re in productions together. They need to understand that they’re here to support each other and to be constructive in the learning.”

Curtis also supports the careers of its graduates in numerous ways, including through Curtis Artist Management, which provides management and global representation for a select group of alumni and faculty artists. In May, Curtis announced the signing of the first two singers to the program: Sarah Fleiss and Juliette Tacchino. 

Hattie Butterworth visited in April for Curtis’ production of Bernstein’s Candide, directed by Emma Griffin. She writes, “Griffin’s colourful production brought a sense of the connection between singers and ease at which they threw themselves into the operetta’s score.” The 2025-26 season of the Curtis Opera Theatre features productions of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, Kaija Saariaho’s La Passion de Simone, and Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“It’s clear Curtis offers a unique gift,” Butterworth writes. “There’s a sense of heritage and tradition with a dedication to the new.”

Read the full article here.

Photo Credits: Wide Eyed Studios

Seeking the Complete Artist: Honens Competition on International Piano

The Honens International Piano Competition recently concluded in Calgary, awarding its Gold medal prize to 29-year old Élisabeth Pion. Founded in 1992 by Canadian philanthropist Ester Honens, the Honens Competition awards its laureates with significant cash prizes up to CAD$100,000 in addition to a three-year career development program for the Gold Laureate. 

“The Honens Competition has grown into Canada’s leading pianist agon, known for its combination of holistic vision with serious artistic financial commitment,” writes Thomas May for International Piano. The competition prides itself on seeking ‘the complete artist’ - defined as one “who combines technical mastery with artistic innovation and inspires through deep cultural and social awareness.” This comprehensive view of artistry is apparent in the events surrounding the competition, which Artistic Director Jon Kimura Parker describes as a way “to create a festival atmosphere and to make people in Calgary feel more engaged in Honens.”

The final round of Honens tested its three remaining competitors in a concerto performance with the Calgary Philharmonic. Pion closed the competition with a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Concerto, which May writes was “brilliantly lit” and “rhythmically alive,” with “a striking sense of spontaneity.”

Read the full feature in International Piano here.

Photo Credit: Tim Nguyen

Marc-André Hamelin on Cover of Gramophone!

Cover Photo Credits: Ben Ealovega

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin recently spoke with Michelle Assay from Gramophone for the cover story of the November 2025 issue. Together, they discussed the process and inspiration behind Hamelin’s latest album, Found Objects / Sound Objects, which includes works by Cage, Marirano, Wolpe, Oswald, Wyner, and even Hamelin himself. Hamelin wanted “a means to put together some repertoire that would have been very difficult, or even impossible, to inject into other projects,” he says. This idea of fragmentation is most apparent in John Oswald’s Tip, a 2021 Hamelin-commissioned piece, which injects upwards of 40 musical clippings from a variety of genres from classical to jazz to pop. Nonetheless, Hamlin’s goal remains the same: “It’s always about sharing with the audience,” he says. “It’s my fantasy that [music] could really express itself semantically, with chapters, paragraphs, sentences, punctuation. Not to mention, of course, ideas. I have this fantasy that whatever I play, in whatever way I play it, could be understood as a narrative, a pure narrative.”

Found Objects / Sound Objects closes with Hamelin’s own composition Hexansabbat, commissioned for Le Piano Symphonique festival in Lucerne and premiered by Yoav Levanon in 2024. Jed Distler, who reviewed the album in the same issue for Gramophone, comments: “Imagine the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique’s stark raving mad finale and Liszt’s Scherzo und Marsch first paired together, then chopped to bits, and then radically reharmonised to 21st-century specifications, with more than a few hints of Carl Stalling’s Warner Brothers cartoon soundtracks tossed into the mix.” 

Distler concludes: “Found Objects / Sound Objects may be Hamelin’s most uncompromising, most personal and most interesting release to date.”

Read the full piece here.

Stream the album here.

Photo Credits: Ben Ealovega

Congratulations to our 8VA GRAMMY® Nominees

Christopher Cerrone: Don’t Look Down, performed by Sandbox Percussion

Best Classical Compendium

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Sandbox Percussion; Jonathan Allen, Victor Caccese, Christopher Cerrone, Ian Rosenbaum, Terry Sweeney & Mike Tierney, producers

Best Contemporary Classical Composition

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Christopher Cerrone, composer (Conor Hanick & Sandbox Percussion)

Best Engineered Album, Classical

Cerrone: Don’t Look Down

Mike Tierney, engineer; Alan Silverman, mastering engineer (Sandbox Percussion)

Don’t Look Down, from contemporary chamber music specialists Sandbox Percussion, reflects the group’s deep connection, friendship, and 10 years of music-making with composer Christopher Cerrone. A bold exploration of the endless possibilities of percussion, Don’t Look Down is a testament to the evolving power of music and collaboration.

Stream the album here.

Kris Bowers: The Wild Robot, featuring Sandbox Percussion

Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media (Includes Film and Television)

The Wild Robot

Kris Bowers, composer

Sandbox Percussion created innovative percussion sounds for The Wild Robot (DreamWorks, 2024), an animated science fiction film directed by Chris Sanders, with music by Kris Bowers. The earthy soundtrack uses a variety of found instruments played by Sandbox Percussion—glass bottles, metal pans, cardboard tubes, coils, coffee mugs, buckets, mixing bowls, chains, an oxygen tank—to bring to life the heartwarming story of Roz, a robot who is stranded on a desert island and learns to use kindness as a survival skill.

Stream the album here.

Beloved: Anne Akiko Meyers, Grant Gershon, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale

Best Choral Performance

Childs: In the Arms of the Beloved

Grant Gershon, conductor (Billy Childs, Dan Chmielinski, Christian Euman, Larry Koonse, Lyris Quartet, Anne Akiko Meyers, Carol Robbins & Luciana Souza; Los Angeles Master Chorale)

Anne Akiko Meyers offers the world premiere recording of Billy Childs’ In the Arms of the Beloved—a requiem for Childs’ mother and the centerpiece of the album—as well as Eric Whitacre’s Seal Lullaby and Ola Gjeilo’s Serenity. All feature the supreme voices of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Grant Gershon.

Stream the album here.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Michael Repper, Curtis Stewart, and the National Philharmonic

Best Orchestral Performance

Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint L’Ouverture; Ballade Op. 4; Suites From ‘24 Negro Melodies’

Michael Repper, conductor (National Philharmonic)

Best Classical Instrumental Solo 

Coleridge-Taylor: 3 Selections From ‘24 Negro Melodies’

Curtis Stewart; Michael Repper, conductor (National Philharmonic)

Conductor Michael Repper, violinist Curtis Stewart, and the National Philharmonic celebrate the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s birth with the world premiere studio recordings of the tone poem Toussaint L’Ouverture and Ballade Op. 4 for Violin and Orchestra. Also included is a newly uncovered suite of 5 Negro Melodies as arranged by Coleridge-Taylor, paired with modern recompositions of 3 Negro Melodies arranged by Curtis Stewart, Hamilton Berry, and Andrew Roitstein. 

Stream the album here.

Karen LeFrak: ROMÁNTICO

Producer of the Year, Classical

Elaine Martone

Karen LeFrak: ROMÁNTICO

Sharon Isbin, Enrico Lopez-Yañez & Orchestra Of St. Luke’s

ROMÁNTICO, by composer Karen LeFrak, features Sharon Isbin, one of the great guitar soloists of our time. The recording includes the world premiere of the three-movement Miami Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra, LeFrak’s homage to the musical heritage of Miami, the New York-based composer’s second home. 

Stream the album here.

Final round GRAMMY® voting opens on December 12, 2025.