Conductor, pianist, and composer Charles Floyd began studying piano at age four and by age twenty had been heard in solo recital, chamber music, and concerto performances around the world. His mentors include pianists Joseph Schwartz, Aube Tzerko, Howard Karp, Lee Luvisi, and Misha Dichter. Mr. Floyd has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the Aspen School of Music Fellowship, Oberlin Conservatory’s Rudolf Serkin Award, and from the Kosciuzko Foundation’s National Chopin Competition. In 2009 he conducted the pre-inaugural concert for President Barack Obama, We Are One, broadcast from the Lincoln Memorial on HBO.

As a conductor, Mr. Floyd has been heard in concert with more than 500 orchestras since 1991. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2004. Since 1994 Mr. Floyd has led the Boston Pops’ Gospel Night at Pops, a program which features orchestral classics as well as a 120-voice gospel chorus. In 1996 he appeared in the Boston Pops’ PBS telecast of Evening at Pops, leading Patti LaBelle and Edwin Hawkins in a program of gospel music, and giving performances as pianist in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with conductor Keith Lockhart. Mr. Floyd has worked with such diverse artists as Grace Bumbry, Sting, Elton John, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Matt Lauer, Ziggy Marley, Heart, Brian Setzer, the Paratore Brothers, Yolanda Adams, Jennifer Holliday, Daryl Coley, Kirk Franklin, Doc Severinsen, Sergio Mendes, Earth, Wind & Fire, Nancy Wilson, Chris Botti, Stevie Wonder, Wynona Judd, and William Warfield. In 1998 he was music director for the PBS holiday special, A Cathedral Christmas, with Denyce Graves at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.

Mr. Floyd’s eleven-year partnership with singer Natalie Cole included such projects as the multiple Grammy award-winning tribute to Nat King Cole Unforgettable, With Love, the Emmy award-winning PBS Great Performances concert video of the same title, as well as the Grammy-winning releases Take A Look and Stardust.

Mr. Floyd’s compositions include a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, One Man's Dream for narrator and orchestra, which was commissioned and premiered by the Charlotte Symphony in 2001. His Four Spirituals for Soprano and Orchestra were premiered at Boston's Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops in 1995, and his oratorio Hosanna for gospel chorus and orchestra premiered there in 2000. Other compositions include a Cello Concerto (2014), a Piano Concerto (2014), a song cycle entitled Song of Solomon (2014), and numerous orchestral adaptations and arrangements.

(November 2017)

Recording and performing as both a solo artist and as a duo with her brother BeBe, CeCe Winans has influenced a generation of gospel and secular vocalists over the course of her career. She has earned ten Grammys, twenty Dove Awards, and seven Stellar Awards, in addition to being inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Nashville Music City Walk of Fame. She has also been named a Trailblazer of Soul by BMI and garnered multiple NAACP Image, Soul Train, and Essence awards.

Ms. Winans has sold more than five million albums in the US, topping the Gospel charts while crossing over with tracks such as "Count On Me," her duet with Whitney Houston from the multi-platinum Waiting To Exhale soundtrack. She touched millions more with inspirational performances everywhere from Oprah to the White House in addition to appearing on the television series 7th Heaven and Doc.

While collaborating with family is nothing new for Ms. Winans, the recording sessions for her recent album Let Them Fall in Love found the Detroit native working for the first time with her son Alvin Love III in the producer's chair. Her other recordings include Songs of Emotional Healing (2010) and Thy Kingdom Come (2008), which won a Grammy for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album. She also received Grammys for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album for CeCe Winans (2001), Alone in His Presence (1995), and Different Lifestyles (1991). Her other solo albums include Purified (2005), Throne Room (2003), Alabaster Box (1999), His Gift (1998), and Everlasting Love (1998). She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2013 in the Colors of Christmas.

(November 2017)

Grammy award-winner Edwin Hawkins grew up in a musical family. He began singing in youth choirs at a very early age, eventually discovering the piano at age five. At age seven he began playing for the Hawkins family group, who released their first recording in 1957. He went on to sing at several churches and on a weekly Sunday night radio broadcast before he was sixteen years old. With his brother Bishop Walter Hawkins, Edwin Hawkins is the co-founder of the Edwin Hawkins & Walter Hawkins Music and Arts Love Fellowship Conference.

In 1967, with the help of Betty Watson, Mr. Hawkins started the Northern California State Youth Choir. A year later he recorded the album Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord. The album featured the song “Oh Happy Day,” which became one of the biggest Gospel hits of all time selling seven million copies and earning him a Grammy award in 1970. He has since recorded dozens of albums and has been nominated for ten Grammy awards over a career that has spanned four decades. In 1972, he won his second Grammy award for Every Man Wants to Be Free, the third for Wonderful in 1980, and his fourth for If You Love Me in 1983. Other records include Kings and Kingdoms and Joyful Christmas, for Sony Music, and All Things are Possible. His album Love is the Only Way includes a new version of his classic hit “Oh Happy Day” and features guest appearances by Dita Jackson, Brenda Roy, Lawrence Matthew, Bishop Walter Hawkins, and Lynette Hawkins-Stephens. "Oh Happy Day" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2005. In 2016, Mr. Hawkins was selected by US Congress as an honored guest at the 8th annual Evolution of Gospel Conference at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.

In 1996 he teamed up with all-Swedish Gospel choir Svart På Vitt, on a ten-city US tour. Later that year, he was a guest on the PBS television special An Evening with the Boston Pops, which also featured Patti LaBelle and Desiree Coleman Jackson.

Mr. Hawkins, who is often regarded as “the Father of Contemporary Gospel,” makes his San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances.

(November 2017)

Paula West has captured the hearts of critics and audiences alike from coast to coast. Her distinctive repertory includes songs by such writers as Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Jimmy Webb, and Leonard Cohen.

Born into a Marine Corps family, Ms. West grew up in San Diego and later moved to San Francisco. She has performed at such venues as Yoshi's San Francisco, Empire Plush Room, and the Rrazz Room, and she gives annual shows at the Herbst Theatre. In New York, she has performed at Feinstein's at the Regency, the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel, Jazz Standard, Birdland, Blue Note, the Iridium, and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center. She has also been a featured soloist with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. Among her national engagements are performances at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Boston's Scullers, Jazz Aspen, and Spoleto Festival USA. She performed at the White House in a salute to American writers and has given engagements in Europe, Japan, and Israel. She has shared the bill with luminaries such as Rosemary Clooney, Jimmy Scott, Oscar Brown, Jr., Freddy Cole, Mose Allison, Mavis Staples, and Dave Frishberg. Ms. West has also worked with jazz greats Bobby Hutcherson, Bill Charlap, Mulgrew Miller, Frank Wess, Victor Lewis, Peter Washington, Regina Carter, Roy Haynes, Eric Reed, and Bruce Barth.

Her album Paula West Live at Jazz Standard with the George Mesterhazy Quartet (Hi-Horse Records) celebrates both the life of Mr. Mesterhazy and Ms. West’s strong musical partnership with the quartet. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances.

(November 2017)