Leadership & Staff
Board of Trustees
OFFICERS
President
Christine M. Hurt
Vice President
Christine Snyder
Secretary
John A. Roberts, Esq.
Treasurer
Glenn R. Garven, CFA
TRUSTEES
Hayden J. Cohen
Douglas Fambrough, Ph.D.
Glenn R. Garven, CFA
Kim Z. Golden, CFA
Kevin Hirano
Christine M. Hurt
Michael A. Jacobs, M.D.
Alfred Ko
Richard Miles
Steven E. Norwitz
Yvonne L. Ottaviano, M.D.
Brooke Pollack
John A. Roberts, Esq.
Rüdiger Rückmann
Matthew Snow
Christine Snyder
Andrew Yanai
Advisory Board Members
Staff
Music Director Emeritus
Markand Thakar
Assistant Conductor
Isaiah Shim
Composer in Residence
Jonathan Leshnoff
Executive Director
Ben Newman
Operations Manager
Ken Bell
Stage Manager
Craig Teer
House Manager David Zeit
Ben Newman, Executive Director
Jonathan Leshnoff, Composer in Residence
Distinguished by The New York Times as “a leader of contemporary American lyricism,” GRAMMY-nominated composer Jonathan Leshnoff is renowned for his music’s striking harmonies, structural complexity, and powerful themes. The Baltimore-based composer has been ranked among the most performed living composers by American orchestras in recent seasons and his compositions have been performed by leading international orchestras and chamber ensembles in hundreds of concerts worldwide. He has received recent commissions from Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, Nashville, and Pittsburgh, among others. Leshnoff’s compositions have also been premiered by classical music’s most celebrated soloists, including Gil Shaham, Johannes Moser, Manuel Barrueco, Noah Bendix-Balgley, and Joyce Yang. There are eight all-Leshnoff albums to date. Among his most notable recent releases is the 2019 Naxos recording exclusively featuring Leshnoff’s music performed by the Nashville Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero; nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Classical Compendium, the CD included the World Premiere performance of his Symphony No. 4, “Heichalos” with the Violins of Hope. In the fall of 2020, Reference Recordings released a highly acclaimed all-Leshnoff disc featuring World Premiere recordings of his Piano Concerto and his Symphony No. 3 commemorating World War I. Earlier in 2020, Reference Recordings released an extensively reviewed album featuring the World Premiere performance of Leshnoff’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Bassoon by the Pittsburgh Symphony and conductor Manfred Honeck, which made it to the top of the Billboard charts. Other notable releases include a 2016 recording of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performing Leshnoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Zohar oratorio, and three earlier all-Leshnoff albums—of both his orchestral and chamber music works—on the Naxos American Classics label. A disc featuring all of his string quartets was also released in August 2020. Celebrated by BBC Music Magazine as “enchanting” and by American Record Guide as “lyrical, virtuosic, tender, and passionate all at once,” Leshnoff’s music has been lauded by Strings Magazine as “distinct from anything else that’s out there” and by The Baltimore Sun as “remarkably assured, cohesively constructed and radiantly lyrical.” Leshnoff’s catalog is vast, including several symphonies, various concerti, and solo and chamber music works. Leshnoff is a Professor of Music at Towson University.
Markand Thakar, Music Director Emeritus
BCO’s Music Director from 2004-2023, Thakar is a former assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic and Grand Prize winner of the American Prize in Orchestral Conducting for 2019-20. His appearances on stage include concerts and a national radio broadcast with the New York Philharmonic, as well as concerts with the National, San Antonio, Charlotte, Wichita, Knoxville, Colorado Springs, Illinois, Maryland, National Gallery, Waterbury, and Annapolis symphony orchestras; the Ulsan (South Korea) Philharmonic; the Boston Pro Arte, National, and Cleveland chamber orchestras; and opera productions with Baltimore Opera Theater, Teatro Lirico d’Europa, and Duluth Festival Opera. A frequent guest conductor at the Aspen Music Festival, Mr. Thakar has appeared with Yo-Yo Ma and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and with Itzhak Perlman and the Boulder Philharmonic. He is a winner of the Geraldine C. and Emory M. Ford Foundation Award, and he has been a frequent commentator for NPR’s Performance Today.
With BCO, Thakar has recorded three CDs for the Naxos label, including albums of concertos by Classical Era masters Carl Stamitz, Franz Hoffmeister, Ignaz Pleyel and Jonathan Leshnoff. In 2013, BCO traveled to China to perform a series of Viennese New Year’s concerts, and the Orchestra’s performance in New York that same year earned a review from The New York Times, which praised the group’s “warmth and substance.” During his 12-year’s tenure with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, DSSO saw dramatic growth in both audience and artistic prominence to what Minnesota Public Radio called “Minnesota’s other great orchestra.” Noted internationally as a pedagogue, Maestro Thakar’s two annual intensive conducting programs have drawn conductors from five continents. His students have won significant conducting and music director positions across North America and internationally including with the Hartford, Winnipeg, Oklahoma City, Sioux Falls, and Grande Ronde symphony orchestras; staff conducting positions with The Metropolitan Opera, and the orchestras of Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Dallas, Seattle, St. Louis, Portland (OR), Phoenix, Charlotte, Kansas City; and numerous collegiate positions.
Formerly an associate conductor of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conductor of Eugene Symphony’s “NightMusic” pops series, Maestro Thakar was music director and conductor of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra in New York City, Barnard- Columbia Philharmonia, Classical Symphony of Cincinnati, Penn’s Woods Philharmonia, and the National Festival Orchestra of the Great Lakes Festival of Musical Arts. He was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study orchestral conducting in Romania and is a past winner of the Exxon Conductor’s Program auditions. He earned a bachelor’s degree in composition and violin performance from The Juilliard School; a master’s degree in music theory from Columbia University; and a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory. He undertook special studies in orchestral conducting at the Curtis Institute and the Ciprian Porumbescu Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania. Other conducting studies and mentors include Gustav Meier, Max Rudolf, Peter Perret, and Sergiu Celibidache, the legendary, former music-director of the Berlin Philharmonic, under whose mentorship Thakar’s most significant work was realized while conducting the Munich Philharmonic.
Thakar is the author of three seminal books. On the Principles and Practice of Conducting (University of Rochester Press, 2016) is a manual for acquiring necessary and invaluable skills and understandings. Looking for the “Harp” Quartet; An Investigation into Musical Beauty (University of Rochester Press, 2011) is a journey through the experience of musical beauty from the standpoint of the composer, performer, and listener. The book is described as “a 225-page tour de force,” and “an exercise in academic excellence and a seminal contribution for personal, professional, and academic classical music studies” (Midwest Book Review). Counterpoint: Fundamentals of Music Making (published by Yale University Press, 1990) uses species counterpoint to promote an understanding of how both composers and performers contribute to the experience of musical beauty. Thakar lives in Baltimore with his wife, violist Victoria Chiang.
Isaiah Shim, Assistant Conductor
A versatile musician, Isaiah Shim is currently studying orchestral conducting under the tutelage of Marin Alsop at the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University. Outside of his studies, he serves as assistant conductor for the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras and Young Artists of America at Strathmore in Maryland. Before pursuing conducting, Isaiah received bachelor’s degrees in piano performance and music education from Wheaton College (IL), where he studied piano with Dr. Karin Redekopp Edwards. He has also studied with Grace McFarlane.
As a pianist and conductor, he has performed in the United States, as well as in Australia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Thailand and the United Kingdom. He has coached with noted pianists Martin Canin, Natalya Antonova and Bruce Brubaker and has participated in conducting masterclasses led by John Nelson, Diane Wittry and Maurice Peress. Isaiah’s gifts as a classical pianist and conductor are enhanced by his passion for, and skill at improvisation, arranging and composition. His creative improvisations in a variety of musical genres and insightful arrangements have featured regularly in his concerts.