Mezzo-soprano Beste Kalender was a resident artist and a Rebanks Fellow at Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music during the 2015-2016 season. During the previous season, she performed as an Emerging Artist with the Calgary Opera and made her mainstage debut with the company in the title role of Bizet's Carmen. Ms. Kalender was named the Jeunes Ambassadeurs Lyriques of Canada for the fourth time in 2016, and recently won the Bourse Lyrique Coréen and the Bourse Lyrique Allemande. Other engagements include representing Canada in Korea at the Sori Festival; in Bologna, Italy, with Teatro Comunale di Bologna; and in Germany in 2016. Ms. Kalender made her French debut with Les Chorégies D'Orange in 2014, and recently made her US debut singing the title role in Music Academy of the West's production of Rossini's La Cenerentola. She also performed with Stephanie Blythe at Carnegie Hall in January 2016 as part of The Song Continues festival.

Ms. Kalender's repertoire includes Bianca (The Rape of Lucretia with Banff Centre, Against the Grain Theatre, and Canadian Opera Company); Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel with Westminster's CoOPERAtive Program); Mercedes and Carmen (Carmen with Music Academy of the West and Calgary Opera); Fox (The Cunning Little Vixen with the Glenn Gould School); Zerlina (Don Giovanni with the Glenn Gould School); and Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro with Opera by Request). Ms. Kalender is a recipient of the 2015 Canada Council for the Arts Grant for Professional Musicians, was a finalist at the 2016 Opéra Concours International de Chant de Marmande, and won the 2016 Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award.

Baritone Benjamin Dickerson is the winner of Music Academy of the West's 2015 Marilyn Horne Song Competition. This season, Mr. Dickerson joins the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts as a Schwab Vocal Rising Star, and New York Festival of Song as part of their Emerging Artists series. He also returns to the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as a Gerdine Young Artist. Mr. Dickerson's recent national recital tour culminated in a performance at The Greene Space in New York-broadcast live on WQXR-with Isabel Leonard and Marilyn Horne. Equally at home on operatic stages, Mr. Dickerson recently covered the roles of Schaunard in La bohème and Pyralyl in the world premiere of Jack Perla's Shalimar the Clown with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. He also recently covered the role of Dandini (La Cenerentola) at Music Academy of the West and Green Mountain Opera Festival. Mr. Dickerson has performed leading roles in Don Giovanni, The Dangerous Liaisons, and Le roi l'a dit under the batons of Kenneth Merrill and George Manahan at the Manhattan School of Music.

A Vermont native, Mr. Dickerson enjoys frequent collaboration with the Burlington Chamber Orchestra and the Burlington Choral Society, performing works such as Haydn's The Seasons, Handel's Messiah, and Francois Joseph Gossec's Requiem. In December 2016, he received a bachelor's degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he was a recipient of the Mae Zenke Orvis Opera Scholarship. Other recent performances include Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro), Ben (The Telephone), Gaudenzio (Il signor Bruschino), Ottone (L'incoronazione di Poppea), and Papageno (Die Zauberflöte). He currently studies with Ruth Golden.

Warren Jones enjoys a notably eclectic career that has taken him to every corner of the musical world. He was recently named artist-in-residence at the world-renowned Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and performs with some of today's best-known artists, including Stephanie Blythe, Anthony Dean Griffey, Bo Skovhus, Eric Owens, John Relyea, and Richard "Yongjae" O'Neill. He is also the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Principal Pianist for Santa Barbara-based chamber music group Camerata Pacifica, and has partnered with such great performers as Marilyn Horne, Håkan Hagegård, Kathleen Battle, Samuel Ramey, Christine Brewer, Barbara Bonney, Carol Vaness, Judith Blegen, Salvatore Licitra, Tatiana Troyanos, Thomas Hampson, James Morris, and Martti Talvela. He is a long-time member of the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and Music Academy of the West, and received Music Teachers National Association's 2011 Achievement Award, the organization's highest honor.

Mr. Jones was selected as Musical America's 2010 Collaborative Pianist of the Year. He has been invited to perform at the White House for state dinners in honor of the leaders of Canada, Russia, and Italy, and has also been invited three times by the Justices of the United States Supreme Court to perform in musical afternoons. A graduate of New England Conservatory of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mr. Jones currently serves on the former's board of visitors and has been honored with a doctorate degree from the latter. His discography includes 31 recordings on every major label in a wide range of repertory, and his conducting repertory is similarly varied. He has led sold-out, critically acclaimed performances of Mascagni's L'amico Fritz, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and he conducted the world premiere of a new operatic version of A Christmas Carol at the Houston Grand Opera in 2014. Mr. Jones returned to the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera for performances of Donizetti's Don Pasquale in the summer of 2015, and in February 2016, he led an innovative new production of Menotti's The Telephone and Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti for Tri-Cities Opera. For more information, visit warrenjones.com.