THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2019-2020 53
Noted in The New
York Times as part
of “a new wave of
female conductors
in their late 20s
through early 40s”,
Sarah Hicks’s versatile
and vibrant
musicianship has
secured her place in
“the next generation
of up-and-coming
American conductors.”
Since 2009 she
has been principal conductor of Orchestra Live with
the Minnesota Orchestra, and she has been instrumental
in creating new Pops productions while also
heading the innovative classical series, “Inside the
Classics.” She has collaborated with diverse artists,
from Jaime Laredo and Hilary Hahn to Josh Groban
and Smokey Robinson. In 2011, she was on a twomonth
tour with Sting as conductor of the final leg
of his Symphonicities tour.
Hicks has guest conducted extensively both in the
United States and abroad, including the Boston
Pops, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony,
San Francisco Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic,
Tokyo Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic,
and Osaka Philharmonic, among others. Past affiliations
include positions with the North Carolina
Symphony, Richmond Symphony and Florida Philharmonic.
She was on faculty of the Curtis Institute
of Music from 2000 to 2005 and continues as staff
conductor.
Hicks was born in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in Honolulu,
Hawaii. Trained on both the piano and the
viola, she was a prizewinning pianist by her early
teens. She received her bachelor’s of arts magna
cum laude from Harvard University in composition.
She holds an artists’ degree in conducting from the
Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with the
late renowned pedagogue Otto-Werner Mueller. In
her spare time, she enjoys running, yoga, her Papillon,
cooking (and eating) with her husband, traveling
and sketching.
Nicole Stott is an
astronaut and artist
who creatively
combines the awe
and wonder of her
spaceflight experience
with her artwork
to inspire
everyone’s appreciation
of our role
as crewmates here
on spaceship Earth.
A veteran NASA
Astronaut, her experience
includes two spaceflights and 104 days
in space on both the Space Shuttle and the International
Space Station (ISS). She performed
one spacewalk (10th female to do so), was the first
person to fly the robotic arm to capture the freeflying
HTV cargo vehicle, she was the last to fly
to and from their ISS mission on a Space Shuttle,
and she was a member of the crew of the final
flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-133.
A personal highlight of Stott’s spaceflight was painting
the first watercolor in space, which is now on
display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
Stott is also a NASA Aquanaut, who in preparation for
spaceflight and along with her NEEMO9 crew, lived
and worked during an 18-day and longest saturation
mission to date on the Aquarius undersea habitat.
As an artist, retired from NASA, Stott combines
her artwork and spaceflight experience to
inspire creative thinking about solutions to our
planetary challenges, to raise awareness of
the surprising interplay between science and art,
and to promote the amazing work being done every
day in space to improve life right here on Earth. She
is the founder of the Space for Art Foundation.
@astro_nicole / nicolestott.com /
spaceforartfoundation.org
SARAH HICKS
Guest Conductor
NICOLE STOTT
Astronaut - Artist - Earthling
/nicolestott.com
/spaceforartfoundation.org