Faculty
We are honored to have Maestro Matthias Bamert and Maestro Ken Lam to be our faculty.
Matthias Bamert
www.matthias-bamert.com
Matthias Bamert's reputation in the Classical to Romantic repertoires, his championship of contemporary music, and his innovative programming has received international praise. He has been described in the international press as elegant, stylish, dynamic, enthusiastic, and sensational. In 2016 he visited Japan 4 times, and conducted the Gunma Philharmonic Orchestra, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Kanazawa, Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Japan Virtuoso Symphony Orchestra and Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2017, he has been appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra, and he celebrates his 75th birthday conducting at the Lucerne Festival and the Brevard Music Festival.
Matthias Bamert's distinguished career began in North America as an apprentice to George Szell, later as Assistant Conductor to Leopold Stokowski, and Resident
Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. Since then, Matthias Bamert has held Music Director positions with the Swiss Radio Orchestra, London Mozart Players, West Australian Symphony and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and as Associate Guest Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London.
Music Director of the London Mozart Players for seven years, Matthias Bamert masterminded a hugely successful series of recordings of works by “Contemporaries of Mozart”, which has already exceeded 75 symphonies. As part of their 50th Anniversary celebrations in 1999, he conducted the LMP at the BBC Proms, in Vienna and at the Lucerne Festival.
In the UK, Matthias Bamert has worked frequently in concert halls and studios with such orchestras as the Philharmonia, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic, featuring regularly at the BBC Proms. Internationally, Matthias Bamert has appeared with many of the great orchestras of the world, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, the Leningrad Philharmonic, the Sydney Symphony, the NHK Symphony Orchestra and Sapporo Symphony Orchestra.
Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Director of the Glasgow contemporary music festival Musica Nova from 1985-90, Matthias Bamert became renowned for his innovative programming, conducting many world premieres. This gift came to the fore during his acclaimed tenure as Director of the Lucerne Festival (1992-98), when he was also responsible for the opening of the KKL concert hall. Moreover, he founded the new Easter and Piano festivals and expanded the program variety and Festival activities.
A prolific recording artist, Matthias Bamert has made over 80 CDs, many of which have won international prizes. His output includes 24 CDs of music by Mozart's contemporaries with the London Mozart Players, the complete symphonies of Parry and five CDs of works by Frank Martin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the symphonies of Roberto Gerhard with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Dutch repertoire with the Residentie Orchestra and the Stokowski transcriptions as well as works by Korngold and Dohnanyi with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
Ken Lam
www.kenlam.org
Ken Lam is director of orchestral studies at The Tianjin Juilliard School and resident conductor of the Tianjin Juilliard Orchestra. He is artistic adviser of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, resident conductor of the Brevard Music Center in North Carolina and serves as artistic director of Hong Kong Voices.
Lam was music director of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2022 and music director of Illinois Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2022. Previously, Lam also held positions as associate conductor for education of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and principal conductor of the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra.
In 2011, Lam won the Memphis Symphony Orchestra International Conducting Competition and was a featured conductor in the League of American Orchestra's 2009 Bruno Walter National Conductors Preview with
the Nashville Symphony. He made his US professional debut with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in June 2008, as one of four conductors selected by Leonard Slatkin. In recent seasons, he led performances with the symphony orchestras of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Pops, Baltimore, Detroit, Buffalo, Memphis, Hawaii, Brevard and Meridian, as well as the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Seungnam Philharmonic, Guiyang Symphony, and the Taipei Symphony Orchestra.
In opera, he directed numerous productions of the Janiec Opera Company at Brevard and was assistant conductor at Cincinnati Opera, Baltimore Lyric Opera and at the Castleton Festival. In recent seasons, Lam led critically acclaimed productions at the Spoleto Festival USA, Lincoln Center Festival and at the Luminato Festival in Canada. His run of Massenet's Manon at Peabody Conservatory was hailed by the Baltimore Sun as a top ten classical event in the Washington D.C/Baltimore area in 2010.
Lam studied conducting with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar at Peabody Conservatory, David Zinman and Murry Sidlin at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, and Leonard Slatkin at the National Conducting Institute. He read economics at St. John's College, Cambridge University and was an attorney specializing in international finance for ten years before becoming a conductor.
Lam is the 2015 recipient of the John Hopkins University Alumni Association’s Global Achievement Award, given to individuals who exemplify the Johns Hopkins tradition of excellence and have brought credit to the University and their profession in the international arena.