Gershwin/Price

CONDUCTOR
Kalena Bovell

With her distinctive voice as Maestra, speaker, and poet, critics praise Panamanian-American conductor Kalena Bovell as “one of the brightest stars in classical music.” Propelled by a steadfast commitment to musical excellence and community access, her recent achievements include receiving the prestigious 2024 Sphinx Medal of Excellence—the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization—and becoming the first Black woman to conduct an opera in Canada, conducting a world premiere reimagination of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha.

Bovell’s 2023-24 season saw her traverse Canada, the U.S. and Switzerland, including debut performances with the Minnesota Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, Colorado Music Festival, Hamilton Philharmonic, and the Victoria Symphony. Her career has had particularly memorable moments, including leading the Chineke! Orchestra at the BBC Proms and conducting Kevin Thomas’s Firebird with the Collage Dance Collective as a part of the Kennedy Center’s “Reframing the Narrative.” In 2022, her featured appearance on the Chineke! Orchestra’s album Coleridge-Taylor earned praise as “overflowing with descriptive imagination” from The Financial Times.

Until 2023, Bovell made her home in Memphis as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Conductor of the MSO Youth Orchestra. There, she led some of the MSO’s more memorable events, from sharing the stage with Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr. to conducting former Music Director Mei-Ann Chen’s farewell concerts.

Off the podium Bovell strives to inspire potential artists from overlooked backgrounds, hoping to help those like herself who entered music later in life than their peers. Her unconventional career path has been chronicled by the BBC, the League of American Orchestras, and similar news outlets, organizations, and universities.

PIANO
Clayton Stephenson

American pianist Clayton Stephenson’s love for music is immediately apparent in his joyous onstage charisma, expressive power, and natural ease at the instrument. Hailed for “extraordinary narrative and poetic gifts” and interpretations that are “fresh, incisive and characterfully alive” (Gramophone), he is committed to making an impact on the world through his music-making.

Growing up in New York City, Clayton started piano lessons at age 7. He was accepted into the Juilliard Outreach Music Advancement Program for underprivileged children the next year, where he attended numerous student recitals and fell in love with music. At age 10, he advanced to Juilliard’s elite Pre-College program with the help of his teacher, Beth Nam. At Juilliard, he studied with Matti Raekallio, Hung-Kuang Chen, and Ernest Barretta. Clayton practiced on a synthesizer at home until he found an old upright piano on the street that an elementary school had thrown away; that would become his practice piano for the next six years until the Lang Lang Foundation donated a new piano to him at age 17.

He credits the generous support of community programs with providing him with musical inspiration and resources along the way. As he describes it, the “3rd Street Music School jump-started my music education; the Young People’s Choir taught me phrasing and voicing; the Juilliard Outreach Music Advancement Program introduced me to formal and rigorous piano training, which enabled me to get into Juilliard PreCollege; the Morningside Music Bridge validated my talent and elevated my self-confidence; the Boy’s Club of New York exposed me to jazz; and the Lang Lang Foundation brought me to stages worldwide and transformed me from a piano student to a young artist.”

Recent and upcoming highlights of Clayton’s burgeoning career include appearances with the Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Fort Worth, Louisville, Lansing, and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras. He now studies in the Harvard-NEC Dual Degree Program, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics at Harvard and a master’s degree in piano performance at the New England Conservatory under Wha Kyung Byun. And his accolades along the way have been numerous – in addition to being the first Black finalist at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, he was named a 2022 Gilmore Young Artist, a 2017 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and a Young Scholar of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. He also received a jury discretionary award at the 2015 Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition and Festival.