Penn Park Contest & Program

In the fall of 2018, Kyle Knox assumed the positions of Music Director of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras and Associate Conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Recent past and upcoming conducting credits include the Milwaukee Symphony (on both their Family and Connections concert series), the Madison Symphony’s Beyond the Score (including Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4), their full annual Education Series (including their Fall and Spring Youth Concerts, Community Concerts, Symphony Soup, and the Bolz Final Forte), as well as Concert on the Green. In works for the stage, Kyle led Mark Adamo’s Little Women for Madison Opera, and later helped coordinate a studio artist showcase in the first ever collaboration between that company and WYSO. Other stage credits include Albert Herring, The Turn of the Screw, and Transformations with UW Opera, as well as Die Fledermaus, The Gondoliers and H.M.S. Pinafore with Madison Savoyards. Additionally he has conducted UW Music Clinic’s High School Honors Orchestra.

He was formerly a clarinetist with the Milwaukee Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and Philadelphia Orchestras, and on faculty at UW-Milwaukee. His festival credits include Tanglewood, Spoleto (Italy), Santa Fe Chamber Music, and Bowdoin Summer Music Festivals, as well as the New York String Orchestra Seminar. He has recorded for the Koch and Naxos labels and has been featured numerous times on NPR’s Performance Today.

Kyle has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, Tan Dun, Sean Shepherd, Huang Ruo, and Jonathan Leshnoff, among many others. Nico Muhly’s chamber work Service Music (2004) was written for and dedicated to him. His debut album, a recording of Conrad Susa’s chamber opera Transformations (the work’s world premiere recording) was recently released on Spotify.

Kyle studied conducting with James Smith, and clarinet with Ricardo Morales and Yehuda Gilad. He holds degrees from Juilliard and UW-Madison.

Under the direction of Leotha (Lee) and Tamera Stanley, the Mt Zion Gospel Choir is known for its ability to infuse traditional gospel harmonies with vigor, joy, and inspiration. With a reputation as one of the best gospel choirs in Wisconsin, the Mt. Zion Gospel Choir have wowed Madison residents for decades with their vocal precision and exuberant style. For over thirty years, the choir has combined jazz, blues, and gospel harmonies to “raise the roof” in captivating and inspiring performances throughout Wisconsin.

The choir has been a beloved featured guest of the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas concerts for 17 years. The choir has also appeared recently with the UW-Madison Marching Band, in a concert for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and in tours in both Germany and France. They have sung with music legends Michael Bolton, Yolanda Adams, Lyle Lovett, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

The Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin serves as home base for the choir. Additional choirs at Mt. Zion include a women’s choir, men’s choir, and children’s choir. Leotha Stanley has been the musical director for thirty-four years and considers gospel music “first love.” He comments, “I love gospel music. I love the inspiration and message it gives people.”

Stanley began playing piano and drums at age five and became the pianist at his neighborhood church in Milwaukee at age thirteen. He recalls, “I got $10 for every funeral.” As a freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he founded a gospel choir, which became his path to Mt. Zion.