Guest Artist Bios

Lan Shui

guest conductor

Lan Shui is renowned for his abilities as an orchestral builder and for his passion in commissioning, premiering and recording new works by leading composers from Asia and elsewhere on the international contemporary orchestral scene. Having recently assumed the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, 2021/22 sees Shui continuing to guest conduct eminent orchestras in both Asia and Europe.

Lan Shui served as the Music Director of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 2019, with American Record Review noting that Shui “turned a good regional orchestra into a world-class ensemble that plays its heart out at every concert”. Together they made several acclaimed tours to Europe, Asia and the United States and appeared for the first time at the BBC Proms in September 2014. As of January 2019, Shui has been appointed SSO’s Conductor Laureate. Lan Shui also held the position of Chief Conductor of the Copenhagen Phil from 2007 to 2015, currently serving as the orchestra’s Honorary Conductor.

As a guest conductor, Shui has worked with many orchestras worldwide. In the United States he has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Baltimore and Detroit symphony orchestras. In Europe he has performed with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestre National de France and Orchestre National de Lille. In Asia he has conducted the Hong Kong, Malaysian and Japan Philharmonic orchestras and maintains a close relationship with the China and Hangzhou Philharmonic orchestras and Shanghai Symphony.

Since 1998 Shui has recorded over 35 CDs with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for BIS — including the first ever complete cycle of Tcherepnin’s symphonies — and also works by Arnold and Hindemith with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra featuring soloists such as Dame Evelyn Glennie, Cho-Liang Lin and Gil Shaham. His albums have twice received GRAMMY ™ nominations.

Lan Shui is the recipient of several international awards from the Beijing Arts Festival and the New York Tcherepnin Society, the 37th Besançon Conductors’ Competition in France and Boston University (Distinguished Alumni Award) as well as the Cultural Medallion — Singapore’s highest accolade in the arts.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Shui studied composition at the Shanghai Conservatory and graduated from The Beijing Central Conservatory. He continued his graduate studies at Boston University while at the same time working closely with Leonard Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Festival. He has worked together with David Zinman as Conducting Affiliate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, as Associate Conductor to Neeme Järvi at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and with Kurt Masur at the New York Philharmonic and Pierre Boulez at The Cleveland Orchestra.

Mari Kodama

piano

Mari Kodama is consistently praised for her virtuosity in a wide range of repertoire, including orchestral, chamber, and solo works by composers of all periods. She is also known for her natural musicality, tonal expressiveness with a clear form, and as a benchmark Beethoven interpreter.

In the 2022/23 Season, Mari Kodama showcases her diverse talents with various international concert appearances, such as Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (Kent Nagano) Duo Recital in Amsterdam/Muziekgebow (Momo Kodama) Charlotte Symphony (Lan Shui) Hyogo Performing Arts Orchestra (Hubert Soudant), and Baden Baden Festspielhaus (John Neumeier). Other recent highlights include concerts with Tokyo Symphony Orchestra (Krzysztof Urbański), Colorado Springs Philharmonic (Josep Caballé Domenech) performing three Beethoven concerti in one evening, and Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg (Kent Nagano). She also had the world premiere of Rodolphe BruneauBoulmier’s new piano concerto, Terra Nostra, broadcast on Deutschlandfunk with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the direction of Kent Nagano at the Berlin Philharmonie.

As a further demonstration of her versatility she plays a central part in the hugely successful ballet production Beethoven Projekt II (John Neumeier) which re-opened the Staatsoper Hamburg after months of COVID closure and which will be revived this season. In recital, she collaborated with Markus Hinterhäuser featuring Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen. She also organized the Beethoven Festival "A Life in a Day" in San Francisco, and presented all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas over two days by 14 different soloists.

Beethoven’s piano works form a focal point of Mari Kodama’s recording activities with Pentatone and Berlin Classics. She is one of few female pianists to record the composer’s complete sonatas, with her 2014 box set from Pentatone receiving critical acclaim. In fall 2019 she released Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Nos. 0 – 5, which together with his Rondo for Piano and Orchestra and his “Eroica” Variations for solo piano complement the Beethoven CD Box with all of Beethoven’s piano concertos as well as the Triple Concerto together with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Kent Nagano (Berlin Classics).

Since her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1995, Mari Kodama has performed with renowned orchestras and conductors in the world’s leading concert halls. She has played with Gothenburg Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In her native Japan, she has played with NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and the symphony orchestras of Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Osaka, among others. Mari Kodama’s Festival appearances include the Verbier Festival, Festival International de Piano La Roque d’Antheron, Aldeburgh Festival of Music, Mostly Mozart in New York City, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, and Kissinger Sommer.

Through her performing activities, Mari Kodama has brought infrequently heard gems of the piano repertoire to global audiences. She has performed Stenhammer’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Gothenburg and New York and has also collaborated with Viviane Hagner on Alban Berg’s Chamber Concerto for Piano and Violin, which they performed with both the Jyväskylä Sinfonia and the DSO Berlin. Additionally, in 2013 Mari Kodama premiered Jean-Pascal Beinthus’ Double Piano Concerto together with Momo Kodama and Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo. Mari Kodama also performed in the Canadian premieres of Jörg Widmann’s Valse Bavaroise and Humoresken, both at the Canadian Orford Festival in summer 2010.

In addition to her performances, Mari Kodama also plays an active role as a music festival artistic director. She co-founded the Forest Hill Musical Days Festival, a chamber music festival in San Francisco, with her husband Kent Nagano, and she has also led the chamber music series at the Orford Music Festival. In 2018 she assumed artistic directorship at the Festival Tra Luce e Sogno in Postignano, Italy, for which she secured artists such as Christian Gerhaher, Matt Haimovitz and Gerold Huber, among others. Mari Kodama is a Steinway Artist.