The Judges
Eliot Fisk
A creative innovator linked to the great romantic tradition of the past, guitarist Eliot Fisk has performed to great acclaim in recital, as soloist with major orchestras, and in a wide variety of chamber music combinations around the world. He has expanded the guitar repertoire through groundbreaking transcriptions of works by Bach, Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, and Paganini, as well as through commissions from leading composers as varied as Berio, Bolcom, Montsalvatge, Nicholas Maw, George Rochberg, and Kurt Schwertsik. Upcoming projects include the premiere of the new quintet for guitar and strings by Leonardo Balada with the Miro String Quartet; the premiere of the new Robert Beaser guitar concerto; and a tour of the US resulting in a duo CD with flamenco guitar great Paco Peña. Fisk was the last direct pupil of Andrés Segovia. Fisk devotes considerable energy to teaching; he is Professor at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg and in Boston at the New England Conservatory. Fisk has recorded for the Musical Heritage Society, DGG, Arabesque, and EMI.
Thomas Frost
Independent record producer Thomas Frost is currently working with Arcadi Volodos and Hilary Hahn for Sony Classical and Deutsche Grammophon. From 1989 to 2001 he was senior executive producer for Sony Classical, producing recordings by Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Kathleen Battle, Placido Domingo, James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, and Itzhak Perlman, among other major artists on that label. He produced the recordings of Vladimir Horowitz from 1963 to 1973 and from 1985 to 1989 for CBS Masterworks, Deutsche Grammophon, and Sony Classical. In the 1980s, as an independent producer for a variety of labels, he worked with Charles Dutoit, the Emerson Quartet, Gidon Kremer, and the Kronos Quartet. As producer and director of Columbia Masterworks in the 1960s and 1970s, he produced the recordings of Leon Fleisher, Glenn Gould, Rudolf Serkin, Isaac Stern, George Szell, and Bruno Walter. Frost, also a professional violinist, studied composition with Paul Hindemith and serves as a board member of the Charles Ives Society, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Recommendation Board of the Avery Fisher Prize. He is the recipient of three Gold Record Awards and seven Grammy® Awards.
Lynn Harrell
Internationally acclaimed cellist, chamber musician, recitalist, conductor and teacher, Lynn Harrell performs regularly with the leading orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, as well as those of London, Munich, Berlin, and Israel. He has toured extensively to Australia, New Zealand, and the Far East. He appears at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, and, for many years, taught and performed at the Aspen Music Festival. Harrell has an extensive discography of over 30 recordings on London Decca, EMI, and New World. Together with Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy, Harrell received two Grammy® awards – one in 1981 and another in 1987 for the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio and the complete Beethoven Piano Trios (both Angel/EMI) respectively. From the mid 80s to the early 90s, he taught at the Royal Academy in London and was Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. From 1993-95, he was head of the Royal Academy. Since 2002, Harrell has taught at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Born in New York to musician parents, he began his musical studies in Dallas, proceeding to the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the first Avery Fisher Award.
Gilbert Hetherwick
Gilbert Hetherwick is President of Sony BMG Masterworks, the classical music division of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, home to many leading classical artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, John Williams, Midori, Murray Perahia, Evgeny Kissin, and others, as well as a legendary catalog of recordings that date back more than a century. Hetherwick, a native of Louisiana, grew up in a family rich in musical traditions and, as a child, learned from his father and the family's extensive record collection about classical music and Broadway musicals. He later gravitated toward blues, rock, folk, and country as he began playing instruments at age 12. His primary instrument was and still is the guitar. After finishing college at LSU, he moved to New Orleans, where he began playing local clubs while managing a classical music store. Hetherwick left New Orleans in 1984 to work as a regional marketing manager for PolyGram Classics. This led to a 20-year career in the classical music business working for PolyGram, Telarc, Sony Classical, and Angel/EMI Classics before becoming General Manager of BMG Classics in New York in 2003. After Sony Music Entertainment and BMG merged, he was appointed President of the new classical division, BMG Masterworks, which includes the venerable imprints RCA Red Seal, Sony Classical, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Arte Nova.
Miryam Yardumian
Miryam Yardumian has music in her blood. One of American composer Richard Yardumian’s 13 children, she grew up listening to the Philadelphia Orchestra and its legendary conductor, Eugene Ormandy. Since 1989, Yardumian has engaged artists for Baltimore Symphony Orchestra subscription concerts. Yardumian formerly held administrative posts with symphonies in Minnesota, New Orleans, on Cape Cod, and in Philadelphia. She has worked closely with music directors David Zinman and Yuri Temirkanov (Baltimore), Sir Neville Marriner (Minnesota), and Leonard Slatkin (New Orleans). She has also worked with many noted soloists and has assisted a number of them in the early stages of their careers. A children's book she wrote at age five, "The Happy Man and His Dump Truck," was published in five languages as a Little Golden Book.
