Direct From New Orleans!

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.

Born in New York City, John Walthausen is a multi-talented musician, maintaining an active career as both an organ and harpsichord soloist and as an ensemble player. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College, and in 2011 he gained admission to the Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris, where he studied the organ with Olivier Latry and Michel Bouvard, earning a master’s degree with highest honors (“mention tres bien”). In 2015, he received a master’s degree in historical performance from the Schola Cantorum of Basel, Switzerland, where he studied harpsichord with Jörg-Andreas Bötticher and organ with Lorenzo Ghielmi. 

He has played recitals throughout Europe and the United States in cities including Paris, Chartres, Poitiers, Milan, Innsbruck, Basel, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Albany, and Washington, DC. Additionally, he has presented recitals at the Pacific Baroque Festival, Paris-des-Orgues, Toulouse-les-orgues, the Toul Bach Festival, and Internationale Meisterorganisten in Innsbruck. From 2015 to 2016, Walthausen served as organist in residence at Sapporo Concert Hall in Hokkaido, Japan. He currently serves as organist and choirmaster at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania, and appears regularly as an accompanist and continuo player in ensembles across the East Coast.

Soprano Amy Owens enjoys a diverse career in concert work, opera, and new music. She has appeared in concert in venues ranging from Wolf Trap to Carnegie Hall with renowned orchestras across the United States, including the National Symphony Orchestra (Washington, DC), Utah Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, Omaha Symphony, Virginia Symphony (Norfolk), and Buffalo Philharmonic. Her operatic engagements have taken her to the Santa Fe Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Dallas Opera, Utah Opera, Central City Opera (Colorado), On Site Opera (New York City), and others.

Owens’s debut album of original music, HAETHOR, was released in spring 2018 to acclaim in the electronica world. This past year, she was selected to participate in the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors at The Dallas Opera. She has received awards from the Sullivan Foundation, the George London Foundation for Singers, and the Metropolitan Opera National Council.

Winner of the 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, tenor Carlos Enrique Santelli is in his second season as a member of Los Angeles Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program, where he covers Nadir in The Pearl Fishers. Also this season, Santelli makes his Dayton Opera debut as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, performs the role of Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore with Virginia Opera, and will sing the tenor solo in Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht with the Sacramento Choral Society. 

Recent projects with LA Opera include performances in Salome, conducted by James Conlon, and Wonderful Town, conducted by Grant Gershon. For the past two summers, Mr. Santelli was a member of Santa Fe Opera’s distinguished Apprentice Artist Program, where he worked with such noted conductors as Harry Bicket, Emmanuel Villaume, and Corrado Rovaris. In 2017 he made his principal role debut with the company as Arturo in a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor. 

Santelli’s concert engagements have included appearances as the tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah (with the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra), Mozart’s Coronation Mass (with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra), and Mozart’s Requiem (with the University of Michigan/Yale Alumni Glee Club). Santelli received his bachelor of music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and his master of music from the University of Michigan, where he held a Jessye Norman Graduate Fellowship. He is a native of Orlando, Florida.

Antonio Derek Domino is a tenor working toward a degree in vocal performance under the instruction of Dreux Montegut. During his time at Loyola University New Orleans he has participated in performances across many genres, singing with the university chorale in performances of Beethoven’s Ninth and the Bach Oster-Oratorium, performing the operatic roles of a child in Letters to Santa and a doctor in Dialogues of the Carmelites, and appearing as a guest on the “American Songbook” faculty recital. 

Outside of Loyola, Domino has performed with the Jefferson Performing Arts Society in its production of Hunchback of Notre Dame and with the New Orleans Opera Chorus in its production of The Abduction from the Seraglio. His upcoming engagements include performing with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of the St. John Passion and “The Infant Minstrel and His Peculiar Menagerie,” and singing the role of Arithmetic in Loyola’s L’enfant et les sortilèges.