Twenty-five-year-old American violinist William Hagen was the third prize winner of the 2015 Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition. A native of Salt Lake City, UT, he first heard the violin when he was three and began taking lessons at age four with Natalie Reed, and later, Deborah Moench. At age ten, he began lessons with Robert Lipsett at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, where he studied until the age of seventeen. After studying at the Juilliard School for two years with Itzhak Perlman, Mr. Hagen returned to Los Angeles to continue working with Mr. Lipsett at the Colburn Conservatory. He is currently enrolled at the Kronberg Academy in Germany, where he is a student of Christian Tetzlaff. Mr. Hagen is an alumnus of the Verbier Academy in Switzerland, the Perlman Music Program, and the Aspen Music Festival, where he spent many summers.

Mr. Hagen’s 2017-18 season featured debuts with the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony, return engagements with the Utah Symphony and the Fort Worth Symphony, and recitals with pianist Albert Cano Smit in Chicago, Aspen, Darmstadt, and at the University of Florida. Highlights of recent seasons include debuts with the Oregon Symphony and at the Colmar Festival in France; his Tokyo recital debut and recitals in Paris, Brussels, Virginia, and the Ravinia Festival; and chamber music concerts with Steven Isserlis at Wigmore Hall in London, Tabea Zimmermann at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, and in New York City with the Jupiter Chamber Players. He has also played chamber music with Gidon Kremer, Steven Isserlis, and Christian Tetzlaff at the Chamber Music Connects the World Festival in Kronberg, Germany.

Mr. Hagen performs on the 1735 “Sennhauser” Guarnerius del Gesù violin, on generous loan from the Stradivari Society of Chicago. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances.

(July 2018)

Twenty-five-year-old conductor Alexander Prior is in his first season as the Chief Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut at these performances. In the 2017-18 season, he returned to the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and made debuts with the Detroit, Hamburg, and Toledo symphonies, I Musici de Montréal, and Frankfurt Opera, where he conducted Rigoletto. Highlights of the 2016-17 season included debuts with the Houston Symphony, Vancouver Opera conducting Hänsel und Gretel, and Edmonton Opera conducting Elektra, as well as a return to the Royal Danish Opera conducting Swan Lake. 

Also a celebrated composer, Mr. Prior's ballet Mowgli, commissioned by the Moscow State Ballet has received regular performances since its premiere at the Kremlin Theatre in 2008. The Edmonton Symphony recently premiered his latest work, Putl'lt, a large symphonic work inspired by the eponymous Nuxálk word meaning "everything belongs to those generations that are not yet born." Other works include Distant Calls for voice and piano quintet; Elegy in Memory of Ligeti for cello and piano; Horizons: An American Crescendo for four soloists and orchestra, premiered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Mr. Prior's direction at the Barbican Centre; Symphony No. 4, Gogol, commissioned by the cultural committee of Saint Petersburg for the Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra and Choir; Symphony No. 6, premiered by the Dallas Symphony; and the triple concerto That Which Must Remain Unspoken for violin, cello, and piano, commissioned by the City of Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra.

British-born and a graduate of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Mr. Prior was a conducting fellow at both the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival. In the 2009-10 season, he served as assistant conductor at the Seattle Symphony. His mentors include Thomas Dausgaard, Robert Spano, Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony, Andrew Manze, and Nicholas McGegan and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, both at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. 

(July 2018)