Pianist Julius Drake lives in London and collaborates with many of the world’s leading artists. He appears regularly at major music centers and festivals, including Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Schubertiade, and Salzburg music festivals; Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center (New York); Kennedy Center (Washington DC); Royal Concertgebouw (Amsterdam); Berlin Philharmonie; Châtelet and Musée du Louvre (Paris); La Scala (Milan), Teatro de la Zarzuela (Madrid); Konzerthaus (Vienna); and Wigmore Hall and BBC Proms (London). Mr. Drake is also invited to perform at international chamber music festivals, including West Cork (Ireland), Oxford (England); Boswil (Switzerland), Delft (Netherlands), and Lockenhaus (Austria).

Mr. Drake was director of the Perth international Chamber Music Festival, artistic director of the Leeds Lieder Festival, and musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, which toured to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and New York. Since 2009, he has been Artistic Director of the Machynlleth Festival (Wales).

He has been invited to devise song series’ for Wigmore Hall, BBC, Royal Concertgebouw, and Boulez Saal (Berlin). His annual series of song recitals in the historic Middle Temple Hall (London) has featured performances with many vocalists including Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Gerald Finley, Sergei Leiferkus, Dame Felicity Lott, Mark Padmore, Simon Keenlyside, and Willard White.

Mr. Drake’s recordings include a Gramophone award-winning series with Gerald Finley on Hyperion; recordings on the EMI, Wigmore Live, Virgin Classics, Bis, Onyx, and Harmonia Mundi labels. His most recent recordings include an acclaimed performance of Janáček’s Diary of One who Disappeared with Nicky Spence and Liszt: The Complete Songs, Vol. 6 with Julia Kleiter on Hyperion, and Paradise Lost with Anna Prohaska on Alpha.

Mr. Drake holds a Professorship at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts (Austria) and teaches at the Guildhall School of Music (London). He is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and is invited to give master classes worldwide.

Upcoming concerts include a series celebrating Beethoven’s 250th birthday at the 92nd Street Y (New York); a Mahler series at the Roayl Concertgebouw; recitals at La Scala with Aleksandra Kurzak and Wigmore Hall with Alice Coote, in Barcelona with Dame Sarah Connolly, Berlin with Angelika Kirchschlager, New York and Madrid with Günther Groissböck, at Edinburgh Festival with Gerald Finley, and Schubertiade (Austria); and tours in Europe with Anna Prohaska and Eva-Maria Westbroek.

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. Born in Los Angeles, he studied at the University of Southern California, and in his mid-twenties, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

In 1987, he co-founded the New World Symphony (NWS), America’s Orchestral Academy. Since then, he has worked with more than 1,100 NWS Fellows, many of whom have gone onto careers with major orchestras. In June 2020, he completed a remarkable 25-year tenure as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, notable for innovative programming, enhancing the orchestral concert experience with multimedia and creative staging, showcasing the works of American composers, and attracting new audiences to orchestral music, both at home at Davies Symphony Hall and through extensive media projects.

A twelve-time Grammy Award winner, his discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts. In 2020, he was profiled on PBS’s American Masters. As a composer, his major works include From the Diary of Anne Frank (1990), commissioned by UNICEF and premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke (2019). Both works appear on a recent Grammy award-winning recording on SFS Media.

He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, a member of the California Hall of Fame, and a 2019 Kennedy Center Honoree.