Diane has worked with some of the most recognized names in the recording industry – Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg, Tony Bennett, Kathleen Battle, Michael McDonald, Peabo Bryson, Nancy Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Roberta Flack, Backstreet Boys, Placido Domingo, Britney Spears, Vanessa Williams, Christina Aguilera and James Ingram, to name a few.

This year, Diane Louie helped Stevie Wonder, a longtime musical associate, bring to life a commission from the Library of Congress. “Sketches of a Life”, a 21-minute piece for chamber orchestra was performed for President and First Lady Obama in conjunction with Stevie’s receipt of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

Diane Louie leads the Hip Hop Orchestra for The Harmony Project, an award-winning research based program that targets at-risk youth in underserved areas of Los Angeles. This program has been recognized by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities as one of the best youth and humanities programs in the nation.

Diane Louie serves as supervising orchestrator for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and other variety shows and specials such as American Idol, Grammys, An Evening of Stars and the NAACP Image Awards.

In over twenty-five years as a musical director, Diane Louie has helmed orchestras worldwide, including the London Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Detroit Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic. She has written songs and special material for the Academy Awards, Emmys, Grammys, Image Awards, Miss America, HBO’s Happily Ever After, Fame and Friends.

In memory of the victims and heroes of 9/11, “Virtus Populi” premiered in Boston with Roberta Flack and the Boston Symphony, and a special “America the Beautiful” was televised from Ground Zero with Lionel Richie, Mary J. Blige and the Boys Choir of Harlem.

In 2002, “Pearl”, a musical co-written with Debbie Allen and James Ingram debuted at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. In 2005, “Dancing In the Wings”, a ballet based on Allen’s bestselling children’s book, made its world premiere at the Kennedy Center, as did “Alex in Wonderland” in 2007.

Diane Louie completed the score for “The Way Forward”, a film following the lives of three young people growing up in South Africa. In the spring of 2005, she completed work on “Future by Design”, a feature by Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker William Gazecki. She contributed to the scores for the Jamie Foxx Special, Life Is Not a Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story and numerous TV series.

She is a songwriter and lyricist, with recordings by some of today’s most popular artists. Christina Aguilera’s “Stripped” DVD includes Louie’s brand new reworking of the multi-platinum hit “Genie in a Bottle”.

Bio courtesy of www.dianelouie.com

As he begins his twelfth year as Music Director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, in fall 2010, he enters his second season as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and his fourth season with the Gothenburg Symphony. Armed with unparalleled passion, energy and artistic excellence, Dudamel is dedicated to leading these orchestras, as well as to increasing his commitment to opera.

Coming from a background where being involved in music from a young age was a life changing experience, Gustavo Dudamel is devoted to investing in classical music as an engine of social change. The message of his ongoing work in Venezuela through El Sistema, which influences hundreds of thousands of children each year, is being carried now into the United States through Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). This program for children targets underserved Los Angeles communities and continues to grow and expand under Dudamel’s leadership and that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is also involved in advising on pilot programs in Gothenburg, Sweden and Raploch, Scotland.

Following a summer 2010 concert performance of Bizet’s Carmen with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and semi-staged performances of Verdi’s La Traviata with the SBYO in Caracas, Gustavo Dudamel began his 2010-11 season in Gothenburg. A return Vienna Philharmonic engagement with a European tour culminated at New York’s Carnegie Hall on October 2 and 3. Dudamel’s Los Angeles Philharmonic season began on October 7 with an Opening Night Gala Concert featuring guest artist Juan Diego Flórez, and is being telecast by PBS with international distribution. Dudamel then goes on to La Scala in October and November where he conducts nine staged performances of Bizet’s Carmen. An operatically themed series of Berlin Philharmonic concerts with soloist Elina Garanča culminates in a nationally televised New Year’s concert to end 2010. In January/February 2011, Dudamel leads the LA Phil on his first international tour as their Music Director with concerts in Lisbon, Madrid, Cologne, London, Paris, Budapest and Vienna, with repertoire including Slonimsky’s Earbox by John Adams, Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 Jeremiah, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. Other Dudamel conducting highlights of the LA Phil’s season include the “Brahms Unbound” Festival, a series of seven concerts pairing Brahms’s complete symphonic pieces with premieres and newly commisioned works, in addition to concerts with repertoire ranging from Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony to works by composers such as Bruckner, Górecki, Gubaidulina, Lieberson, Mackey, Schumann, Shostakovich, Takemitsu and Weber. With the Gothenburg Symphony, highlights include a national tour of Sweden during April 2011, along with numerous Gothenburg performances with repertoire focused on Mahler, Brahms and Dvořák. Also in April, Dudamel returns to the Berlin Philharmonic for two weeks of appearances which include concerts in Berlin and at the Salzburg Easter Festival. Gustavo Dudamel continues to lead the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra this season for concerts and recordings in Caracas, Venezuela, as well as for an extensive South American tour to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

Gustavo Dudamel has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2005. His debut recording, Beethoven Nos. 5&7 with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra released in 2006, received the 2007 Echo Award (Germany) for “New Artist of the Year.” Subsequent recordings with the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra include Mahler No. 5, FIESTA (primarily Latin American works) and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 and Francesca da Rimini. Dudamel and the SBYO’s latest recording, Rite, featuring Revueltas’s La noche de los Mayas and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, was released in June 2010. DVDs include Dudamel’s Inaugural Concert as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, recorded October 8, 2009; Birthday Concert for Pope Benedict XVI; and Live from Salzburg, featuring performances of Mussorgsky/Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Martha Argerich, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, and the SBYO. On the iTunes front, Deutsche Grammophon has released Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Inaugural Concert performances of both John Adams’s City Noir and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, as well as Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Brought to international attention by triumphing in the inaugural Bamberger Symphoniker Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition in May 2004, Gustavo Dudamel was born in 1981 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, where he studied violin at the Jacinto Lara Conservatory with José Luis Jiménez and later, with José Francisco del Castillo, at the Latin American Academy of Violin. In 1996, he began his conducting studies with Rodolfo Saglimbeni and that same year was named Music Director of the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra. In 1999, along with assuming the Music Director position of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, he began conducting studies with José Antonio Abreu, the Orchestra’s founder. In May 2007, Dudamel was awarded the Premio de la Latindad, an honor given for outstanding contributions to Latin cultural life. In 2008, the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra was granted Spain’s prestigious annual Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, and in 2007, Dudamel received the Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Young Artists. Along with his mentor Dr. Abreu, he was granted the 2008 “Q Prize” from Harvard University for extraordinary service to children. In June 2009, he received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Centro-Occidental Lisandro Alvarado in his hometown of Barquisimeto, Venezuela. Dudamel was awarded the Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris in 2009, and is the recipient of the 2010 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, which recognizes rising, innovative talents. Gustavo Dudamel was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2009 by TIME magazine and has been featured three times on CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Bio courtesy of www.gustavodudamel.com

Here are two things you should know right off about Dan Zanes, two things that set him apart from the huge and festive field of individuals who have in the past few years begun making music for families and people of all ages in a way that is, frankly, changing the face of America, or the sound of it, at least.

First, he is making homemade family music and encouraging similar behaviors in friends and neighbors. Second, he is the guy who is always interested in singing along with people, people everywhere. Which brings us to his mission, if you can call it a mission: Zanes is introducing his musical friends to his neighborhood friends and then showing everybody not just that they, yes, can play together but that they can also feel pretty good while doing so. In this sense, Zanes is a 21st century version of the guy who in the old days used to conduct the town band from the gazebo, though in lieu of a gazebo he’s playing places like Carnegie Hall and the Melbourne International Arts Festival, where no matter how you say it good music is good. He is a ringmaster, introducing new songs and reconnecting people to songs that have always been there, and still are—it’s just that people forgot about them.

Bio courtesy of DanZanes.com

She captured national attention in the role of Lorrell, one of the three original “Dreamgirls” in Michael Bennet’s award-winning Broadway musical. Moreover, she portrayed Lillian in Bob Fosse’s Big Deal. Other work includes George C. Wolfe’s Colored Museum and Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill.

Rickey Minor is the Emmy-nominated music director of American Idol. His distinguished resume also includes the Grammys and the Super Bowl, and he has collaborated with major recording artists including Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys, Ray Charles, Beyoncé Knowles, and many more. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Karen.

Bio courtesy RickeyMinor.com

Her success, nurtured by worldwide tours with Tears for Fears, Phil Collins, Michael Bolton, and Luther Vandross, has been solidified by four Grammy nominations and a seemingly bottomless well of creative energy.
Oleta will be adding to her musical legacy with the release of a new secular album, Let’s Stay Here, on April 21st of this year. Although Oleta has had the opportunity to work with many fantastic producers over her career, she decided to produce this album herself in addition to writing eight of the ten songs. Let’s Stay Here is a creative and evocative project with a soulful jazz influence and songs that project many tantalizing thoughts. The songs weave through many a journey including a seductive love affair, vacation bliss, an abusive relationship, forgiveness, as well as a cover of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” which was featured on a recent Buick commercial television ad campaign.

A long-time resident of Kansas City, Kansas, where she has found sanctuary from the turmoil of the entertainment industry, Oleta Adams also remains anchored by her upbringing in the Pacific Northwest. The youngest of three girls and two boys, Oleta spent her formative years in Seattle before traveling over the mountains at age six to Yakima, Washington, an idyllic town of 60,000. She first demonstrated her budding vocal gifts in the Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church where her father served as minister.

By the time Oleta was eleven, she was directing and accompanying four choirs, having already established herself as a piano prodigy. She credits her further musical development in junior high school to Lee Farrell, “the brilliant Julliard-trained teacher and voice coach who changed my life.” School provided another outlet for Oleta Adams: the theatrical stage. In her senior year she broke barriers and traditions as the star of Hello Dolly! admitting that “early on I realized the pleasures of being a big fish in a small pond.”

Turning down the chance to pursue an operatic career as a lyric soprano, along with a scholarship to Pacific Lutheran University, Oleta instead spent a summer in Europe before heading to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. One demo tape and $5,000 later, she discovered that the disco movement had deafened music executives. Oleta’s gospel-flavored voice was not “in.” With the help of Coach Lee Farrell she wound up in Kansas City, where she launched her career playing piano bars, hotel lounges and showrooms.

Oleta quickly became a local institution, with her own billboard and a regular gig at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Celebrities from every musical genre caught her act, including Eartha Kitt, Cab Calloway, Air Supply, Gino Vanelli, Yes and Billy Joel. Finally serendipity came in the form of the British band Tears for Fears, whose frontmen Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith asked her to appear on their 1989 “The Seeds of Love’ album, video and European tour. Proving that good things come to those who wait, upon her return to the U.S. Oleta signed a record deal for her first solo album in 1991.

With seven CDs, including secular, gospel, a Christmas album, and soon the eighth, Let’s Stay Here, worldwide acclaim and over two-and a-half million albums sold, Oleta’s musical odyssey continues – spiritually and creatively. For this consummate artist- composer-producer-musician, many goals remain on the horizon.

Bio courtesy of OletaAdams.com

Christopher Cross’ 1980 self-titled debut album with the lead single “Ride Like the Wind” rocketed to the #2 spot; the massive success of the second single “Sailing” made Cross a superstar, and in the wake of two more Top 20 hits, “Never Be the Same” and “Say You’ll Be Mine,” he walked off with an unprecedented and record-setting five Grammys in 1981, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for “Sailing.” He soon scored a second #1, as well as an Academy Award, with “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do),” which he co-wrote with Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen for the smash Dudley Moore film comedy Arthur. (Excerpt from Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide)

Christopher’s much-anticipated second album Another Page came out in 1983 and produced the hits “All Right,” “No Time for Talk,” and a Top Ten entry for “Think of Laura,” a song featured prominently in the daytime drama, General Hospital.

Amazingly, he charted 8 songs into the Billboard Top-40 charts between 1980 and 1983.

Four years, two albums, eight hit singles, several world tours, five Grammy’s, and one Oscar marked Christopher’s meteoric rise to the top.

At this writing, Christopher has released eight albums (not counting hits packages), a body of work revealing a steady, focused dedication to that oh-so-rare commodity of the latter-day popster – artistic growth.

Eight albums.

Those who have followed Cross have reaped the rewards of set after set of intelligently written and performed melodic pop.

Throughout the years, he has remained a unique artist, replete with that confounding blend of sensitivity, determination and conviction of his own artistry.

Beyond the Cross-mania years, Christopher co-wrote and sang the song that helped define the 1984 Summer Olympics, “A Chance for Heaven;” he co-wrote and sang the delightful “Loving Strangers” for the hit 1986 Tom Hanks movie, Nothing in Common; and the following year he presented “I Will (Take You Forever),” a lovely duet with international Les Miserables star Frances Ruffelle, which tune has graced many a wedding (and is still a staple of radio worldwide). Singles from most all of his albums charted in Japan and elsewhere in East; and the rollicking “In the Blink of an Eye” enjoyed a smashing top-ten success in Germany and surrounding territories in 1992.

Christopher Cross’ string of post-megahit albums from the mid-1980s to the present represents, in a consistent manner, a hard-travelled road of integrity, a refusal to compromise: Every Turn of the World, Christopher’s foray into a harder rocking style which delighted fans; Back of My Mind, a collection of breezy pop perfection with a foreshadowing of the deeper range to come; Rendezvous, the insightful, landmark Cross set that found him tackling thoughtful subjects; Window, a heartfelt, acoustic-pop of the era; and Walking In Avalon / Red Room, arguably the very pinnacle of sophisticated, mature – and, lest we forget, fun – Christopher Cross music.

Christopher continues to record and perform, averaging about 100 live shows per year. Every few years, the world has been gifted with a new set of songs, each of the albums growing innately from the last while resolutely advancing the state of his art. And he has continued to seek out his fans worldwide by regularly hitting the concert road, never depriving those fans of the early hits (played note-perfect), as well as a broad range of his latest work – the songs where his heart (and his art) truly lies. The audience response is never less than rapturous.

That later work, much of it in collaboration with longtime cohort Rob Meurer, stands up to the best of better-known contemporary pop; some would say it stands a bit taller. It also stands as a testament to an artist who strives to deepen. Christopher Cross has many a laurel, none of which has ever been rested on.

Bio courtesy ChristopherCross.com