BERNARD LABADIE
Bernard Labadie last conducted H&H in October 2010. Labadie has established himself worldwide as one of the leading conductors of the Baroque and Classical repertoire, a reputation that is closely tied with Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec which he founded and continues to lead as music director to this day. With these two ensembles he regularly tours Canada, the US and Europe, in major venues and festivals such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Kennedy Center, Barbican, Concertgebouw, and the Salzburg Festival, among others. Labadie has also been artistic director of L’Opéra de Québec and L’Opéra de Montréal. As a guest he conducted Handel’s Orlando with Glimmerglass Opera, Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Mozart’s Lucio Sillawith Santa Fe Opera, to highlight a few. September 2009 marked his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, a work he conducted again at Cincinnati Opera in 2011. Since his debut with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1999, Labadie has become a regular presence on the podiums of the major North American orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, most of them on a regular basis.

Testament to Labadie’s appeal with audiences around the world is the long list of re-engagements during the 2012­–2013 Season. In the US, his itinerary takes him to the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, and Toronto Symphony. Overseas he will conduct the Melbourne Symphony and leads various European orchestras, including the Academy of Ancient Music, WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, BBC Scottish Symphony, and the Brussels Philharmonic.

Labadie’s extensive discography includes many critically acclaimed recordings on the Dorian, ATMA and Virgin Classics labels, including Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and his collaboration with Les Violons du Roy and La Chapelle de Québec of Mozart’s Requiem, both winning Canada’s Juno Award. A complete recording of C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concertos with Truls Mørk and Les Violons du Roy was released in 2011, as was a recording of J.S. Bach Piano Concertos with Alexandre Tharaud, both for Virgin Classics. For his achievements, the Canadian government honored him with the appointment as “Officer of the Order of Canada” in 2005 and Quebec made him a “Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Québec” in 2006.

HARRY CHRISTOPHERS
Harry Christophers enters his fourth season as Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society with the 2012–2013 Season. Appointed in 2008, he began his tenure with the 2009–2010 Season and has conducted Handel and Haydn each season since September 2006, when he led a sold-out performance in the Esterházy Palace at the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. Christophers and H&H have since embarked on an ambitious artistic journey towards H&H’s 2015 Bicentennial with a showcase of works premiered in the United States by the Handel and Haydn Society since 1815, ambitious education programming and community outreach activities and partnerships and the release of the first of a series of recordings on CORO leading to the Bicentennial. Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the UK-based choir and period instrument ensemble The Sixteen. He has directed The Sixteen throughout Europe, America, and the Far East, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th century music. In 2000, he instituted the “Choral Pilgrimage,” a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury. He has recorded close to 100 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including a Grand Prix du Disque for Handel Messiah, numerous Preise der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Awards), the coveted Gramophone Award for Early Music, and the prestigious Classical Brit Award (2005) for his disc entitled Renaissance. In 2009 he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award; The Sixteen also won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a CD that also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination. Harry Christophers is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Granada Symphony Orchestra and a regular guest conductor with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. In October 2008, Christophers was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Leicester. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford and also of the Royal Welsh Academy for Music and Drama and was awarded a CBE in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

TERESA NEFF
Teresa Neff received her PhD in Musicology from Boston University. Her research interests center around Gottfried van Swieten, a late 18th-century Viennese patron and composer. Artaria will publish Neff’s edition of Swieten’s symphonies later this year. She has presented papers at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the New England Chapter of the American Musicological Society, and the Architecture/Music/Acoustics Conference. She presents concert preview lectures for Elderhostel and Boston Lyric Opera, and also teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Boston Conservatory.

The Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program
Established in 1985, the Handel and Haydn Society’s Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program was created with strong ties to the organization’s early leaders. Lowell Mason, best known as the founding father of music education in American public schools, enjoyed a long association with Handel and Haydn, first as musical editor and later as President of H&H from 1827–1832. Mason taught classes at the Bowdoin Street Church and founded the Boston Academy of Music in 1833 to promote music education to the public. When H&H launched its official educational initiative in 1985, it focused on public education with its free school visits that now reach public schools in nine Massachusetts districts; the Collaborative Youth Concerts followed in 1987, in which students from different school districts and cultural backgrounds come together to perform for their communities alongside Handel and Haydn musicians. Collaborative Youth Concerts celebrate their 25th Anniversary in 2012, and honor a rich history of providing students with a sense of achievement and musical ownership in ways that traditional youth concerts cannot.

In 1994, H&H started the Vocal Apprenticeship Program (VAP) with Youth Chorus (grades 6–8) and the High School Soloists pre-professional program, held at New England Conservatory. Later, VAP reached younger students with Singers (grades 3–5) and high school students with its Young Men’s (grades 8–12) and Young Women’s (grades 9–12) Choruses, so that students could grow with the program for several years, increasing their individual sense of accomplishment as they passed through each level. Students enrolled in VAP learn music theory and receive performance opportunities throughout each season. VAP classes take place in the state-of-the-art music division wing of the Boston Latin School, located in one of the most culturally accessible neighborhoods of Boston, next to Massachusetts College of Art; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Handel and Haydn Society is the only professional music organization in Massachusetts serving as a parent to its own youth ensemble program and regularly presenting them in conjunction with its professional series at Symphony Hall. VAP is also the only youth ensemble program in New England to include individualized scholarships for vocal instruction, diction, and other classes for potential music majors in collaboration with New England Conservatory.