Artist Bios

Kwamé Ryan, conductor

Kwamé Ryan was born in Canada and grew up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where he received his early musical education. He completed his studies in the U.K. and Hungary, reading Musicology at Cambridge University.

The 2024–25 season marks the start of Ryan’s tenure as Music Director of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. Previously, he held the position of General Music Director of Freiburg Opera from 1999 to 2003 and served as Musical and Artistic Director of the National Orchestra of Bordeaux Aquitaine from 2007 to 2013. As a guest conductor in Germany, he has led the Radio Orchestras of Stuttgart and Bavaria, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Staatsoper Saarbrücken, and Staatsoper Stuttgart. In France, he has worked at Opéra de la Bastille, Opéra de Lyon, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. His work in the U.S. and the U.K. has taken him to the Symphony Orchestras of Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Houston, Boston Lyric Opera, English National Opera, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish Symphony, and the London Philharmonia. He has been a regular guest of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra and, in 2021, returned to La Monnaie in Brussels for the world premiere of Kris Defoort’s The Time of our Singing , which won the International Opera Award for World Premiere of the Year.

A recipient of international awards for outstanding work in the field of music education, Ryan has served as Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of France and as Director of the Academy for the Performing Arts at the University of Trinidad and Tobago.

Guest engagements this season include returns to Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie and Dutch National Opera, along with debuts at Washington National Opera and the Residentie Orkest in The Hague.

Louis Schwizgebel piano

Louis Schwizgebel has been described as “a genuine virtuoso, a spirited young genius with real depth” (Fono Forum) and an “insightful musician” (The New York Times). He is praised repeatedly for his poise, elegance, imagination, expressive lyricism, and crystalline articulation. He performs regularly in recital and with the finest orchestras across the globe, and has received critical acclaim for his recordings.

In 2023–24, Schwizgebel’s highlights included a tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Kazuki Yamada (Victoria Hall Geneva, Zurich Tonhalle, Casino Bern, KKL Lucerne) and concerts with the Tonkünstler-Orchester (Vienna Musikverein), Oxford Philharmonic, Erfurt Philharmonic, Dortmunder Philharmoniker, Belgrade Philharmonic, Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra, Royal Bangkok Symphony, and Orchestre national de Metz (Amsterdam Concertgebouw), as well as Mozart play-and-conduct projects at the Puplinge Festival and with the Geneva International Orchestra at the Piano à Saint-Ursanne Festival.

In recent seasons, further highlights have included performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony, all BBC Orchestras, Royal Scottish National Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Bamberg Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Oslo Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Sinfonieorchester Basel, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Vienna Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Auckland Philharmonia.

In solo recital and chamber music, Schwizgebel performs regularly at major festivals and halls including London’s Wigmore, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Rheingau Festival, Klavierfest Ruhr, Lille Piano Festival, Septembre Musical de Montreux-Vevey, and Singapore International Piano Festival. He has performed chamber music with the

likes of Benjamin Beilman, Narek Hakhnazaryan, Renaud Capuçon, and Alina Ibragimova. Finally, Schwizgebel has worked with a wide range of conductors including Edward Gardner, Mirga GražinytėTyla, Emmanuel Krivine, Nicholas Collon, Thierry Fischer, Charles Dutoit, Marek Janowski, Fabio Luisi, Lahav Shani, Robin Ticciati, Louis Langrée, John Wilson, James Gaffigan, Santtu Matias Rouvali, Ben Gernon, Elim Chan, Allondra della Parra, Michael Sanderling, Vasily Petrenko, and Fabien Gabel.

Schwizgebel performs frequently in his native Switzerland; he has played in major festivals such as Verbier, Lucerne, and the Gstaad and Meisterinterpreten series at Zurich Tonhalle. In 2014 he made his BBC Proms debut with an electrifying televised performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and in 2018 at the Festival de Radio France in a televised performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Schwizgebel records for Aparté and his latest recording of Schubert’s Sonatas D. 845 and D. 958 was described as an “album of extraordinary precision” by Le Figaro. Previous releases include Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto Nos. 2 and 5 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, described as “gorgeously singing and wonderfully delicate” by BBC Music Magazine, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Nos. 1 and 2 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra hailed as a “beautifully nuanced account” by Gramophone.

Schwizgebel was born in 1987 in Geneva. He studied with Brigitte Meyer in Lausanne and Pascal Devoyon in Berlin, and then later at the Juilliard School with Emanuel Ax and Robert McDonald, and at London’s Royal Academy of Music with Pascal Nemirovski. At the age of seventeen, he won the Geneva International Music Competition and, two years later, the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York. In 2012, he won second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition and in 2013 he became a BBC New Generation Artist.