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Mark Mandarano, lecturer/Family Concert host/program annotator

Mark Mandarano has conducted performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and other important venues in the US and abroad. In recent years, he was invited to act as a cultural ambassador to Russia performing the music of Gershwin (2017) and Bernstein (2018), with concerts in numerous cities including the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Mr. Mandarano has led performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, Nürnberger Symphoniker, Ural Philharmonic, New York City Opera, and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christoph von Dohnányi, Antonio Pappano, Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Roger Norrington, Valery Gergiev, Osmo Vänskä, and Leonard Slatkin. An advocate of the music of living composers, he has conducted performances of works by Karel Husa, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Steven Stucky, John Corigliano, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Melinda Wagner, Libby Larsen, David Bruce, Nico Muhly, and others. His association with Slatkin led to Mr. Mandarano conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. Mr. Mandarano is the artistic director and conductor of the Sinfonietta of Riverdale (NY), which he founded in 2008, and has been the Director of the Macalester Symphony Orchestra since 2012. In 2021, he commissioned new works for the Macalester Orchestra intended for asynchronous performance—the subsequent video of these five Pandemic World Premieres has received more than 50,000 views on YouTube. In 2022, Mr. Mandarano was named Artistic Director of the Minnesota Youth Symphonies, one of the top youth orchestra programs in the nation.