Composing music that both embraces and challenges western classical traditions, Gabriel Prokofiev has emerged as a significant voice in new approaches to classical music at the beginning of the 21st century. After completing his musical studies at Birmingham and York Universities, and dissatisfied with the seemingly insular world of contemporary classical music, he developed a parallel music career as a dance, grime, electro and hip-hop producer. This background in dance music combined with his classical roots gives his music a unique and truly contemporary sound.

Gabriel has built up a large body of orchestral and chamber works and has composed seven concertos (three featuring turntables), as well as many electronic works, often combining synthesisers and samples with classical instrumentation. His works have been performed internationally by orchestras including Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony, St Petersburg Philharmonic, Moscow State Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, MDR Leipzig, Copenhagen Phil, Luxembourg Philharmonique, Buenos Aires Filharmonica, Porto Symphony and Real Orquesta de Sevilla. Also, he frequently collaborates with contemporary dancers and has worked with companies including Stuttgarter Ballet, Rambert Dance, Bern Ballet, Shobana Jeyasingh, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Alexander Whitley Dance and Gandini Juggling. In 2019, his first full-length opera Elizabetta was premiered by Regensburg Opera in Bavaria.

Gabriel is also an events curator, producer and founder of the Nonclassical record label and club night, home to a host of artists who defy conventions. Through Nonclassical, he has been one of the leading proponents of presenting classical music in non-traditional venues; and he regularly performs in East London nightclubs, warehouses and electronic music festivals, often DJing and doing live remixes of the works just performed.

Gabriel studied electroacoustic composition under Jonty Harrison in Birmingham, and a Masters in composition with Ambrose Field & Roger Marsh. He is published by both Faber Music and Mute Song, and resides in Hackney, London, with his wife and their three young children.

The Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936, is one of the best symphony orchestras in Russia today. Famous for its high quality performance culture and its flexibility in acquiring new repertoire, the orchestra consists of more than 100 musicians, performing all major Western European and Russian works from the classical and romantic period as well as works by outstanding contemporary composers.Based in Yekaterinburg, on the border between Europe and Asia, the UPO performs up to 110 concerts with more than 70 programs per year, both at its domicile, the Sverdlovsk State Philharmonic Hall, and on its extensive international tours. The home concerts are regularly broadcast live on video into the region’s public libraries and cultural centres where music lovers from the Oblast Sverdlovsk can come together to share the experience.
Together with its Principal Conductor and Artistic Director Dmitry Liss who has led the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra since 1995, the orchestra visited Spain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Japan and the United States on more than 20 tours, performing at venues such as the Kennedy Center Washington, Bunka-Kaikan Tokyo, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, KKL Lucerne, Salle Pleyel Paris and Tonhalle Zurich. It participated in numerous international festivals such as the Music Biennale Zagreb, the Cannes Music Festival, the Europalia Russia Festival in Belgium and repeatedly in the Music Festival Crescendo in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Kaliningrad, the Festival International de Piano à la Roque d’Anthéron and La Folle Journée in France, Spain and Japan. The UPO was especially honoured by Valerij Gergiev’s invitation to perform under his direction at the opening of the Mariinsky Theatre’s new concert hall in 2007. Meanwhile, the orchestra presents its own concert series at the Mariinsky Theatre.
Over the years, the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra has worked with many outstanding Russian and foreign guest conductors such as Dmitry Kitayenko, Vladimir Fedoseev, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Andrey Boreyko, Mikhail Pletnev, Klaus Tennstedt, Krzysztof Penderecki and many others. The UPO has made numerous recordings, including several CDs with pianist Boris Berezovsky (all four piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff for Mirare as well as piano concertos by Khachaturian and Tchaikovsky for Warner Classics) as well as recordings of Symphonies by Galina Ustvolskaya and Nikolai Miaskovsky.

Alexey Bogorad is a rising young resident conductor of Moscow's acclaimed Bolshoi Theatre. His 2011 triumph at the Lovro von Matacic International Conducting Competition in Zagreb pushed him to the front ranks of today's generation of European conducting talent.
Born to a family of musicians, Maestro Bogorad started studying music at the age of three. After completing Moscow's prestigious Central Music School, he first studied clarinet and then studied conducting with Maestro Gennady Rozhdestvensky at the Moscow State Conservatory. In 2009 he completed his conducting studies with honors, including master classes with Mikhail Jurowsky and Colin Metters.
In 2010, Bogorad was awarded a fellowship by the American Academy of Conducting to study and perform at the Aspen Music Festival under Music Director Robert Spano. In the same year, he won second prize and special recognition from the Ukraine National Symphony in the Stefan Turchak International Conducting Competition in Kiev. Also in 2010, he was selected by Maestro Vladimir Jurowsky to be assistant conductor of the Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra.
An experienced solo clarinetist and chamber musician, Bogorad was a principal player of the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra from 1997 to 2011. In addition, he was a soloist of Mikhail Pletnev's Russian National Orchestra from 2001 to 2012.
Recognized for his mastery in conducting opera and ballet repertoire, Maestro Bogorad leads a wide range of programs at the Bolshoi. His opera experience includes Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmila; Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night and The Tsar’s Bride; Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, Evgeny Onegin and The Queen of Spades; Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel; Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman; Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Tosca and La Boheme; Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortileges; and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.
Of the ballet repertoire, he has conducted Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker, Raymonda, Cinderella, Don Quixote, Bayadere, Jewels, La Sylphide and Marco Spada, which among other Bolshoi productions led by Bogorad, was widely broadcast by Bel Air Classiques. He has worked with such artists as Svetlana Zakharova, Albina Shagimuratova, and Natalia Gutman.
Regularly invited to conduct the Svetlanov State Symphony Orchestra, Bogorad has mastered an extensive symphonic repertoire. With Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra he has recorded a double CD of classical ballet music for Columbia Records label.
Maestro Bogorad performs as guest conductor at various Russian opera companies and symphony orchestras including the Russian National Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Academic Symphony Orchestra, and Perm Opera Theatre. In 2013 he substituted for Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra during the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg. In 2015 he was honored with an invitation to conduct the piano finals of the XV Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow, live-streamed by Medici TV with more ten millions viewers worldwide.
Outside Russia Bogorad has achieved debuts with the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra (Norway), Oita Symphony (Japan), Teatro di San Carlo (Naples, Italy), Craiova Opera Theatre (Romania), Belgrade and Prague National Theater

Branford Marsalis has stayed the course. From his early acclaim as a Saxophonist bringing new energy and new audiences to the jazz art, he has refined and expanded his talents and his horizons as a musician, composer, bandleader grand educator – a 21st-century mainstay of artistic excellence. Classical music inhabits a growing portion of Branford’s musical universe. A frequent soloist with classical ensembles, Branford has become increasingly sought after as a featured soloist with such acclaimed orchestras as the Chicago, Detroit, Düsseldorf, and North Carolina Symphonies and the Boston Pops, with a growing repertoire that includes compositions by Debussy, Glazunov, Ibert, Mahler, Milhaud, Rorem and Vaughn Williams. Some might gauge Branford Marsalis’s success by his numerous awards, including three Grammys and (together with his father and brothers) his citation as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. To Branford, however, these are only way stations along what continues to be one of the most fascinating and rewarding journeys in the world of music.