GRAMMY Award-winner Jeff Tyzik is one of America’s most innovative and sought after pops conductors. Tyzik is recognized for his brilliant arrangements, original programming and engaging rapport with audiences of all ages. This is the 13th season that Tyzik has held The Dot and Paul Mason Principal Pops Conductor’s Podium at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He also serves as Principal Pops Conductor of the Oregon Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, a post he has held for 30 years. Tyzik made his debut with the New York Philharmonic in September 2023 and closed the 2023-24 season conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra.

Frequently invited as a guest conductor, Tyzik has appeared with over one hundred orchestras including the Boston Pops, Cincinnati Pops, Milwaukee Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo, Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

In May 2007, the Harmonia Mundi label released a recording of works by Gershwin with Tyzik conducting the RPO and acclaimed pianist Jon Nakamatsu. This recording stayed in the Top 10 on the Billboard classical chart for over three months. Alex Ross of The New Yorker, called it “one of the snappiest Gershwin discs in years.” “His concert is the kind of thing that’s likely to give classical music a good name, perhaps even make it seem, dare I say, relevant,” writes John Pitcher of the Gannet News Service.

As an accomplished composer and arranger, Tyzik has had his compositions recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, Erich Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony and Doc Severinsen with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He has also produced and composed theme music for many of the major television networks, including ABC, NBC, HBO, and Cinemax, and released six of his own albums on Capitol, Polygram and Amherst Records. He produced a GRAMMY Award-winning album, The Tonight Show Band with Doc Severinsen, Vol. 1. Tyzik’s subsequent recordings with Severinsen garnered three more GRAMMY nominations.

Tyzik has written over 400 arrangements, orchestrations, and compositions for orchestra. A consummate musician, Tyzik regularly appears as a guest conductor in the RPO’s classical subscription series. He has also been commissioned to compose original works for orchestra, including a Trombone Concerto, which was funded by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts and subsequently performed at Carnegie Hall. Tyzik conducted the world premiere of his original work New York Cityscapes with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2010. Tyzik composed a Timpani Concerto, commissioned by the RPO, and also led the RPO in the premiere of his new orchestral suite, Images: Musical Impressions of an Art Gallery to rave reviews. In the 2015-16 season, Tyzik premiered his new work Jazz Concerto for Violin and Orchestra on his Philharmonic Series performance with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2018, the Eastman Wind Ensemble released Images, an all Tyzik CD of his compositions for wind ensemble. The Eastman Wind Ensemble recently recorded Tyzik’s Jazz Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and Wind Ensemble and Symphonies for release in the fall of 2024.

In 2023, Jeff Tyzik launched his new publishing company TyzikMusic.com. This digital site features over 150 arrangements, orchestrations and compositions for symphony orchestra, chamber music ensembles and wind ensemble.

A native of Hyde Park, New York, Tyzik began his life in music when he first picked up a cornet at age nine. He studied both classical and jazz throughout high school and went on to earn both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music. While there, he studied composition/arranging with Radio City Music Hall’s Ray Wright and jazz studies with Chuck Mangione. Tyzik subsequently toured with Mangione as lead trumpet and worked on five Mangione recordings as a producer and performer from 1976 to 1981.

Committed to performing music of all genres, Tyzik has collaborated with such diverse artists as Leslie Odom Jr., Megan Hilty, Chris Botti, Matthew Morrison, Wynonna Judd, Sutton Foster, Tony Bennett, Art Garfunkel, Dawn Upshaw, Marilyn Horne, Arturo Sandoval, The Chieftains, Mark O’Connor, Doc Severinsen, and John Pizzarelli. Tyzik has created numerous original programs that include the greatest music from jazz, classical, Motown, Broadway, film, dance, Latin and swing.

With co-producers Greenberg Artists and Schirmer Theatrical, Jeff Tyzik has created 20 new orchestra pops programs that have been presented by 150 orchestras in the past three seasons.

For more information about Jeff Tyzik, please visit www.tyzikmusic.com

One of the most dazzling American pianists of her generation, Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals, and chamber music in hundreds of cities throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She is one of the most versatile, respected, and best-reviewed pianists of our time. McDermott continues her tenure as artistic director of the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, in Colorado, through 2026, which hosts world-renowned artists and orchestras from around the world. She is also the artistic director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, in Florida.  

Highlights of McDermott’s 2024-25 season include three performances of the Piano Concerto by the 20th-century American composer Amy Cheney Beach with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, with which she makes her subscription debut, and with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (MA); her debut in Galway, Ireland, performing music by Bach, Busoni, and Brahms at a Music for Galway recital; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Paducah Symphony Orchestra (KY); Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Des Moines Symphony, Palm Beach Symphony, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestra USA (WA); performances with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall in New York City, and on tour in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Ashland (OR), and Vienna (VA); a special chamber music program at the New World Symphony, in Miami Beach, that includes Mozart’s Quintet in E-flat major and Olivier Messiaen’s wartime masterwork Quartet for the End of Time; performances as a member of the SPA Trio—with soprano Susanna Phillips and violist Paul Neubauer—at the Rockefeller University (New York City), and at Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (Tucson); and a chamber music program at the McKnight Center for the Performing Arts, in Stillwater (OK).  

McDermott’s 2023-24 season included performances with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, both resulting in immediate re-engagements. She also performed Mozart with the New York Philharmonic at the McKnight Center in Stillwater. Recent international highlights include recitals in France at the famed Piano aux Jacobins, in Toulouse; performances with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra at the Cartagena International Music Festival; and an all-Haydn recital tour of China.   

The breadth of McDermott’s repertoire ranges from Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Scriabin, also including works by today’s most influential composers. A recording artist, McDermott is currently recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Mexico City’s illustrious Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, under conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto. She has also recorded the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, solo works by Chopin, Bach’s English Suites and Partitas (Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine), and Gershwin’s complete works for piano and orchestra with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (also Editor’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine). In 2013 she released an album of Mozart concertos with the Calder Quartet that was praised as “exceptional on every count” by Gramophone Magazine. She has recorded five Haydn piano sonatas and two Haydn concertos with the Odense Philharmonic, in Denmark, including two cadenzas written by the late American composer Charles Wuorinen.   

In recent years, McDermott participated in the New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Silver Jubilee all-Gershwin program and embarked on a cycle of Beethoven concertos at Santa Fe Pro Musica. She also premiered and recorded a new concerto by the Danish composer Poul Ruders with the Vancouver Symphony, alongside Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, and returned to play Gershwin with the New York Philharmonic at Bravo! Vail. Other recent highlights include performing the Mozart Concerto, K. 595 with The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Sir Donald Runnicles; the Bach D minor concerto with members of The Philadelphia Orchestra; and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the New York City-based Le Train Bleu.  

McDermott continues to perform with many leading orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the symphonies of Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Colorado, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Atlanta, San Diego, New Jersey, Columbus, and Baltimore. She has also toured with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi.

McDermott, who studied at the Manhattan School of Music, is a winner of the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women, the Young Concert Artists auditions, and an Avery Fisher Career Grant. She lives in New York City with her husband Michael.

Performer, curator, and on-stage host James Austin Smith “proves that an oboist can have an adventurous solo career.” (The New Yorker). Smith appears at leading national and international chamber music festivals, as co-principal oboe of the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and as an artist of the International Contemporary Ensemble. As artistic and executive director of Tertulia Chamber Music, Smith creates intimate evenings of music, food, and drink in New York and San Francisco, as well as an annual festival in a variety of global destinations. He serves as artistic advisor to Coast Live Music in the San Francisco Bay Area, mentors graduate-level musicians as a professor of oboe and chamber music at Stony Brook University, and is a regular guest at London’s Guildhall School. A Fulbright Scholar and alum of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and CMS’s Bowers Program, he holds degrees in music and political science from Northwestern and Yale universities.

Leading a new generation of soulful crooners, Paul Loren is a singer, songwriter, producer, and consummate entertainer. A native New Yorker, Paul was raised on the rich legacy of soul, classic pop, and the Great American Songbook, and in those musical idioms he feels most at home.

Taking elements from early R&B, jazz, and Brill Building pop, he crafts his music with an ear towards timelessness. “I started singing at three years old along with the little 45rpm records my mom would play and started playing piano at four years old. The voices I remember most and identify with are Ray Charles, Frankie Valli, Sam Cooke, Sinatra, Aretha, Otis, and Tony Bennett. Growing up in New York, Billy Joel was also a big influence.”

Paul completed his first headline tour in 2019, also having performed in the past as a support artist for: The Temptations, as part of Stamford’s Summer Concert Series “Wednesday Night Live”, Brendan James, American Idol Winner Taylor Hicks, David Bromberg, and sold out Joe’s Pub at the Public in NYC multiple times. Paul was also selected by Jennifer Lopez to perform at her Birthday Gala in Las Vegas, showcased at The SoHo House NYC, was a featured artist at the AAA Radio Convention in Boulder, CO, and shared the stage with Paul Shaffer, Queen Latifah, and Christie Brinkley at Target’s launch event for New York Fashion Week.

Paul’s appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon showcased his talents for millions of viewers; with a winning song and viral video to boot. In addition, Paul landed his first television sync on NBC’s Mysteries of Laura, performed on the Nationally Syndicated Radio Show America Weekend with Ed Kalegi, has partnered with The Ryan Seacrest Foundation, showcased at the headquarters of the world-renowned Leo Burnett Ad in Chicago, and had the unique honor of performing at the legendary STAX Museum in Memphis, TN. While in Memphis, Paul had the rare opportunity to record in the world-renowned Sun Studio in the same room as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and so many other pioneers of Rock and Roll.

Paul was also a finalist in the “Unsigned Only” singer songwriter competition for 2018. His debut single All By Myself was supported by radio stations Lighting100 in Nashville, SiriusXM’s The Pulse, WCOO Charleston, and KPND Spokane, among others. His follow up single, I Know A Place, premiered on Huffington Post and received rave reviews along with over 200K views in its first week. Paul’s single, We’ll Be Together Again, written and recorded at home during the early spring of 2020, continues to be a beacon of hope for those affected by uncertainty. All of the proceeds from the song were sent to a COVID-19 relief charity. During the pandemic’s first wave, Paul’s weekly online music show, The Leisure Lounge, was live streamed from his home in NYC and ran for 15 consecutive weeks, broadcasting to thousands of viewers around the world.