Music of the City

Carlos Miguel Prieto is considered the leading Mexican conductor of his generation. A highly respected cultural leader, Prieto is Musical America’s 2019 Conductor of the Year. He possesses a wide-ranging repertoire, has led over 100 world premieres, and is a champion of American and Latin American composers. The 2019–20 season marks his 14th as music director of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), where he has been a part of the cultural revitalization of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. 

Prieto has been the music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México (OSN), the country’s most important orchestra, since 2007. In 2008, he was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, a hand-picked orchestra that performs a two-month-long series of summer programs in Mexico City. In November 2016, he led the OSN on a critically acclaimed nine-concert tour of Germany and Austria, performing the works of Mexican and Latin American composers in halls such as the Wiener Musikverein.

Prieto’s 2018–19 season included his debuts with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Amongst other engagements, he returned to the the Hallé, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, and the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa. 

A passionate proponent of music education, Prieto served as principal conductor of the Orchestra of the Americas from its inception in 2002 until 2011, when he was appointed music director. In early 2010 he conducted the ensemble alongside Valery Gergiev on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the World Economic Forum, at Carnegie Hall. In summer 2018, he led the group on a European tour from Ukraine to Scotland. Prieto was also tapped by Carnegie Hall to lead its NYO2 youth initiative. 

Prieto has an extensive discography that covers labels including Naxos and Sony. Recent Naxos recordings include Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2 and Études-tableaux, op. 33, with Boris Giltburg and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which won a 2018 Opus Klassik award and was listed as a Gramophone’s Critics’ Choice in 2017. With violinist Philippe Quint and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, Prieto recorded works by Bruch, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn (on Avanticlassic) and Korngold’s Violin Concerto (on Naxos), the latter receiving two Grammy nominations. His recording of the Elgar and Finzi Violin Concertos with Ning Feng were released on the Channel Classics in November 2018. 

A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Universities, Prieto was awarded an honorary doctor of music by Loyola University New Orleans in 2018.

The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is dedicated to maintaining live orchestral music and a full-scale symphonic orchestra as an integral part of the cultural and educational life of the New Orleans area, the entire state of Louisiana, and the Gulf South region. Formed in 1991, the LPO is the oldest full-time musician-governed and collaboratively-operated orchestra in the United States.

The LPO offers a full 36-week season with more than 120 performances, including classics, light classics, pops, education, family, park, and community engagement concerts in New Orleans and across multi-parish areas. In addition, The LPO collaborates with and provides orchestral support for other cultural and performing arts organizations, including the New Orleans Opera Association, New Orleans Vocal Arts Chorale, New Orleans Ballet Association, Delta Festival Ballet, Musical Arts Society of New Orleans, and the Historic New Orleans Collection.

Norman Robinson has been a part of the journalistic landscape in New Orleans since 1976. In June 2014 he began a well-deserved retirement, after 38 years on television in the Crescent City. He spent 24 years anchoring the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts at WDSU-TV, the city’s NBC affiliate. He also served as the moderator of WDSU’s award-winning Hot Seat, which has held politicians and policy makers accountable since Hurricane Katrina. Robinson has also worked for broadcast outlets in southern California, Mobile, New York City, and Washington, DC, where he was a member of the White House press corps as a correspondent for CBS News. 

His awards are numerous, spanning subject areas such as crime, politics, tragedy, and humor. Robinson was awarded a prestigious Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University, in 1989, and served as a member of the Nieman Fellowship advisory board. Recently, Robinson served as a contributing correspondent on the documentary Chronicle: Children of Katrina, which won an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Robinson is also a past winner of the Louisiana Association of Broadcasters’ Golden Mic Award and the New Orleans Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Robinson has certificates of recognition from the Naval School of Music, the Columbia School of Broadcasting, and Harvard University. He is also the recipient of an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans. 

Robinson’s military service to his country includes a four-year tour of duty in the United States Marine Corps, where he was a sergeant in the US Marine Corps field bands at Parris Island, Camp Pendleton, and the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. 

Robinson has donated countless hours speaking at events, schools, churches, and charity fundraisers. He is a member of the Rotary Club, a Silverback Society mentor, a Unity of Greater New Orleans board member, and an advisory board member for the Environmental and Construction Pre-Apprenticeship Program, to name a few. Robinson has also played the euphonium (baritone horn) in the nationally recognized New Orleans Concert Band for the past 25 years. 

Robinson is a husband, father, and grand-father.

Jazz clarinetist Doreen Ketchens has been nicknamed Lady Louie, Miss Satchmo, and the Female Louis Armstrong. Ketchens started playing clarinet in 5th grade at Joseph Craig Elementary school.  She attended Delgado Community College, Loyola University, and Southern University New Orleans, receiving scholarships along the way to study with performers such as Henry Larsen at the Hartt School of Music. Known and loved as a French Quarter busker for the last several decades, Ketchens has performed at music festivals and in concert halls and embassies around the world.  She has successfully created her own style that blends her classical training with the soul of jazz. In addition to being a superb performer, Ketchens is also an outstanding educator. Her band, Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans, has represented the city and the United States around the world, performing in multiple countries from Africa to Southeast Asia. Ketchens has performed for four US presidents: Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. Doreen’s Jazz also boasts 30 volumes of CDs and 3 DVDs.   

Davide Mariano performs a wide repertoire in some of the most prestigious venues in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including concert halls in Vienna, Madrid, Tokyo, Munich, Kyoto, and Paris, as well as festivals in Rome, Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Toulouse. As an organist, harpsichordist, and pianist, he collaborates with diverse groups, among them Orchester Wiener Akademie (Vienna), Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra (Los Angeles), Israel Chamber Orchestra, and Sapporo Symphony Orchestra. 

He is a laureate of the St. Albans International Organ Competition and the International Organ Competition Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, among others. Mariano has been awarded scholarships by the Tokyo Foundation, the Fondation l’Or du Rhin, the Fondation Meyer, the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, and the Austrian Ministry of Sciences, Research, and Economy.

Mariano was the first to obtain the Diplôme d’Artiste Interprète (artist’s diploma) in organ from the Paris Conservatory, studying with Michel Bouvard, Olivier Latry, and Louis Robilliard. At the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, he acquired, with unanimous distinction, a master’s degree in organ in the class of Martin Haselböck and a master’s degree in harpsichord in the class of Gordon Murray, winning the university’s honorary prize for top students. Mariano has worked as organist-in-residence at the Kitara concert hall in Sapporo, Japan (2016– 17), and is currently young-artist-in-residence at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans.

Bahamian-born soprano Dara Rahming has been gracing concert and operatic stages for 20 years. Highlights of her career include four seasons with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, two seasons with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and two seasons with the Sarasota Opera. 

In 2004 Rahming began performing with the New York Harlem Production’s tour of the The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, a chapter in her career that took her around the globe. For 10 years she worked with this production company, performing leading and supporting roles in some of the greatest opera houses and theaters in the world, including Bunkamura–Orchard Hall (Tokyo), Alte Oper Frankfurt, Deutsche Oper am Rhein (Dusseldorf), Teatro Pérez Galdós (Las Palmas, Spain), Teatro Massimo Bellini, Catania (Sicily), Semperoper Dresden, Oper Leipzig, Komische Oper Berlin, and Nationaltheater Mannheim. 

After witnessing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005, Rahming began a benefit recital series to raise money for Xavier University of Louisiana, where she had earned a bachelor of arts degree. For nine years, she served Xavier as professor of voice and director of the Opera Workshop. 

Rahming maintains a busy teaching and performing schedule and has added several new roles to her repertoire: the title role of William Grant Still’s opera Minette Fontaine, performed with OperaCréole; Minerva in Opera Louisiane’s adaption of Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria; Sylvie in Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride; and the title role of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, performed with Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería (Mexico) and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. In February 2020 she performed in the world premiere of the completed Freedom Ride at the Chicago Opera Theater.