Conductors
 Alastair Willis served as the Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 2000-2003. He previously held the position of Assistant Conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras and Music Director of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Willis has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Houston Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Oregon Symphony, San Diego Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the orchestras of Hartford, Rhode Island, Knoxville and Harrisburg within the past seasons.
Recorded in 2006 and 2007 at Schermerhorn Symphony Center and released earlier this year, the Nashville Symphony recording of Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells) and Shéhérazade conducted by Willis and featuring mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne, received a 2010 GRAMMY® nomination for ‘Best Classical Album’.
In 1999, Willis was honored as one of six up-and-coming conductors chosen to participate in the American Symphony Orchestra League's National Conductor Preview in Salt Lake City. He was awarded a conducting fellowship to attend the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he studied and collaborated with Seiji Ozawa, Robert Spano, and Sir André Previn, among others. Willis also has studied with David Zinman, David Robertson and Ivan Fischer and has collaborated with other eminent conductors including Michael Tilson Thomas, James Conlon and Jorma Panula.
Born in Acton, Massachusetts, Mr. Willis lived with his family in Moscow for five years before settling in Surrey, England. He received his bachelor's degree with honors from England's Bristol University and continued his studies at Kingston University, where he earned a post-graduate Certificate of Education degree, teaching classroom music from grade-school to high-school levels. In 1994, he was awarded the Salveston Baton Prize for his work with several youth orchestras in and around London. He won a scholarship in 1996 to study with Maestro Larry Rachleff at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, graduating with a Master of Music degree in 1999. In addition to assisting Maestro Rachleff, he spent three years as Principal Conductor of the Campanile Orchestra.
www.alastairwillis.com
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Principal horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra since February 1966, Dale Clevenger is a versatile musician in many areas in addition to the CSO, including chamber music, jazz, commercial recordings, and solos. His mentors are Arnold Jacobs and Adolph Herseth. Before joining the CSO, Dale was a member of Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony of the Air directed by Alfred Wallenstein, and was principal horn of the Kansas City Philharmonic. He has appeared as soloist with orchestras worldwide, including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim conducting. He has taken part in many music festivals including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival; the Florida Music Festival in Sarasota; the Affinis Music Festival in Japan and the FAME Festival. Dale has worked with the European Community Youth Orchestra under Claudio Abbado, conducting and teaching, and has participated in several International Horn Society Workshops, both in the U.S. and abroad. He has given recitals and master classes throughout the world. In 1985, he received an honorary doctor of music degree from Elmhurst College and currently teaches at Roosevelt University, where he is a professor of horn. Also a conductor, Dale served for fourteen years as music director of the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. His conducting career has included guest appearances with the New Japan Philharmonic, the Louisiana Philharmonic, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Florida Symphony (Tampa), The Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Roosevelt University Symphony Orchestra, the Carnegie Mellon University Symphony Orchestra (Pittsburgh), the Toronto Conservatory Orchestra, the Santa Cruz Symphony, the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra (Perth), the Aguascaliente Symphony Orchestra (Mexico), and the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. He also has conducted the Florence Festival Orchestra in Italy.
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Ryan Dudenbostel is a conductor, arranger, and clarinetist living and working in New York City. He serves as a rehearsal and cover conductor at the Manhattan School of Music, preparing the student orchestras for such eminent conductors as Yoav Talmi, H. Robert Reynolds, and Kenneth Kiesler, and is currently conducting a series of recordings, which he also orchestrated, for an upcoming television series produced by the Pacific Encore Performances opera repertory company. As a clarinetist, Dudenbostel has performed with the Civic Opera of Kansas City, and played principal clarinet for the 2007 Kansas City Puccini Festival. In New York, he regularly appears as a substitute musician for the Tony-Award-winning revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center, and recently performed in the New York Musical Theatre Festival's premiere production of To Paint the Earth. He has collaborated with vocalists John Duykers and Aaron St. Clair Nicholson, violinist Mark O’Connor, violist David Aaron Carpenter, and the legendary actor James Earl Jones. Dudenbostel is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, where he earned a Masters Degree in orchestral conducting, and served as assistant conductor in productions of Puccini's La Boheme and Handel's Giulio Cesare. He also holds a Bachelor's Degree in clarinet performance from Western Washington University, where he was named by the Music Department faculty as the outstanding graduate of his class. He has studied conducting with Robert Olson, David Wallace, Kenneth Kiesler, Gustav Meier and Rossen Milanov. He was a participant in the 2004 International Conducting Workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria, and has studied at the Conductors Retreat at Medomak in rural Maine.
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