Mark Padmore was born in London and grew up in Canterbury. After beginning his musical studies on the clarinet, he was awarded a choral scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, and graduated with an honors degree in music. He has established an international career, most notably through his appearances in Bach Passions--especially his acclaimed performances as the Evangelist in both the St. Matthew and St. John Passions with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, staged by Peter Sellars.

In the opera house, Mr. Padmore has worked with directors Peter Brook, Katie Mitchell, Mark Morris, and Deborah Warner. Recent work includes the leading roles in Harrison Birtwistle's The Corridor and The Cure at the Aldeburgh Festival and Linbury Studio Theatre, Covent Garden; Handel's Jephtha for the Welsh and English national operas; Captain Vere in Britten's Billy Budd; and the Evangelist in a staging of the St. Matthew Passion for Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

In concert, Mr. Padmore has performed with the world's leading orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Mr. Padmore has given recitals worldwide, performing the three Schubert song cycles in London, Liverpool, Paris, Tokyo, Vienna, and New York City, as well as at the Schubertiade in Schwarzenberg. His recital partners have included Jonathan Biss, Imogen Cooper, Julius Drake, Till Fellner, Simon Lepper, Roger Vignoles, and Andrew West. Composers who have written for Mr. Padmore include Sally Beamish, Harrison Birtwistle, Jonathan Dove, Thomas Larcher, Nico Muhly, Alec Roth, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Huw Watkins, Ryan Wigglesworth, and Hans Zender.

Mr. Padmore's extensive discography includes Beethoven's Missa solemnis and Haydn's Die Schöpfung with Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra on BR-Klassik; and lieder by Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart with Kristian Bezuidenhout for Harmonia Mundi. Other Harmonia Mundi recordings include As Steals the Morn, a collection of Handel arias with The English Concert (BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award); and Schubert cycles with Paul Lewis (Winterreise, Gramophone Vocal Award).

Mr. Padmore was voted 2016 Vocalist of the Year by Musical America and was awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Kent in 2014. He is artistic director of the St. Endellion Summer Music Festival in Cornwall.

Pianist Jonathan Biss shares his talent, passion, and intellectual curiosity with classical music lovers in the concert hall and beyond. For more than two decades on the concert stage, he has forged relationships with the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and many others.

This season, Mr. Biss continues his latest Beethoven project, Beethoven/5, for which The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra has co-commissioned five composers to write new piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven's piano concertos. The five-year plan began last season, when Mr. Biss premiered Timo Andres's The Blind Banister, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music; he will perform the piece with the New York Philharmonic in the spring of 2017.

In the 2016-2017 season, Mr. Biss examines, both in performance and academically, the concept of a composer's "late style," and has put together programs of later works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Britten, Elgar, Gesualdo, Kurtág, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann-both for solo piano and in collaboration with the Brentano String Quartet and tenor Mark Padmore. In addition to Carnegie Hall, he performs these programs at London's Barbican Centre, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, and in performances in San Francisco and at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. He also gives master classes at Carnegie Hall in connection with the "late style" project and publishes a Kindle Single on the topic in January.

Mr. Biss has a notable recording career with recent albums for EMI winning Diapason d'Or de l'année and Edison awards. In 2017, he will release the sixth volume of his nine-year, nine-disk recording cycle of Beethoven's complete piano sonatas.

Mr. Biss studied at Indiana University and the Curtis Institute of Music, where he joined the piano faculty in 2010. He led the first massive open online course (MOOC) ever offered by a classical music conservatory, Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, reaching more than 150,000 people in 185 countries. His bestselling eBook Beethoven's Shadow, published by Rosetta Books in 2011, was the first Kindle Single written by a classical musician.