Minnesota Orchestra

The Minnesota Orchestra is recognized for distinguished performances in its home state and around the world, award-winning recordings and broadcasts, educational engagement programs, and commitment to building the orchestral repertoire of the future. In September 2023, the ensemble welcomed Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård as its eleventh music director.

Founded in 1903, the ensemble has a long history of touring, including landmark tours to Cuba and South Africa in the past decade. Touring activities, which were paused due to the pandemic, resumed with a May 2023 residency week in Austin, Minnesota. The Orchestra’s recordings and broadcasts have drawn acclaim since the 1920s, including the 2014 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance. Its current ongoing recording project is a series of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies; all ten have been recorded and eight albums have been released, with the final two symphonies to come in subsequent seasons.

Further extending its reach beyond the concert hall, the Orchestra offers This Is Minnesota Orchestra, a series of television and online broadcasts that has earned two Upper Midwest Emmy Award nominations. In July and August the Orchestra offers Summer at Orchestra Hall.

Kensho Watanabe,
conductor

Japanese-American conductor Kensho Watanabe is internationally acclaimed for his dynamic musicality, thoughtful interpretations, and engaging presence on the podium. Following a successful run at the Metropolitan Opera of Kevin Puts’ The Hours last season, Watanabe returns to the Met this season for eight performances of Puccini’s La Bohéme.

Based in Paris, France, Watanabe is an accomplished violinist, receiving his MM from the Yale School of Music, and serving as a substitute violinist of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2012-16. A protégé of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Watanabe was the inaugural conducting fellow of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied with both Nézet-Séguin and Otto-Werner Mueller. Additionally, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Yale, where he studied molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.

Cecilia Belcher,
violin

Violinist Cecilia Belcher, who joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 2014, was named assistant principal second violin in 2017. Previously, she performed with the St. Louis Symphony from 2008 to 2014, and also frequently performed with the Houston Symphony Orchestra and the New York City chamber orchestra The Knights. She has been principal second violin of ROCO in Houston and the Minnesota Bach Ensemble and, as concertmaster, she led the New World Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival Opera Orchestra and Mississippi Valley Orchestra. She has enjoyed traveling the world for festivals and performances, including to Aspen, Tanglewood, Verbier, Banff, Beijing, the BBC Proms, South Africa, New Zealand and throughout Europe.

From St. Louis, Missouri, Belcher began violin studies at the age of 3, and was a student of the renowned Suzuki pedagogue Winifred Crock. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music, studying with Paul Kantor, and a master’s degree from the Shepherd School of Music, studying with Kathleen Winkler. She and her husband Richard Belcher, a cellist in the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, live in Minneapolis with their two young children.