Tara Helen O’Connor is a charismatic performer noted for her artistic depth, brilliant technique, and colorful tone spanning every musical era. Winner of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a two-time Grammy nominee, she was the first wind player to participate in the CMS Two program. A Wm. S. Haynes flute artist, she is a regular participant in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, Mainly Mozart, Spoleto USA, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, the Banff Centre, Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. She is a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning New Millennium Ensemble, a member of the woodwind quintet Windscape and the Bach Aria Group. She has appeared on A&E’s Breakfast with the Arts and Live from Lincoln Center. She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, EMI Classics, Koch International, and Bridge Records. Dr. O'Connor is the Area Head of the Wind Department at Purchase College School of the Arts Conservatory of Music and is the Chair of Classical Music Studies. Additionally she is on the faculty of Bard College Conservatory and the contemporary program at Manhattan School of Music. Her yearly summer flute master class at the Banff Centre in Canada is legendary.

Recently named a Dudamel Fellow by the LA Philharmonic, New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New serves as Associate Conductor for the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and is the Founder and Director of the Lunar Ensemble, a contemporary music collective in Baltimore, Maryland.

Along with her appearances with the NJSO and the Lunar Ensemble, Ms. New has recently led concerts with a range of orchestras, among them, the Atlanta and Miami Symphony Orchestras as well as the Hamilton Philharmonic in Canada and Opus Orchestra in New Zealand. Upcoming guest conducting engagements include performances with Camerata Notturna and the New Amsterdam Symphony in New York. Additionally, Ms. New will return to New Zealand in 2015 to conduct the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra for the finals of the National Concerto Competition.

In 2013, Ms. New made her Carnegie Hall conducting debut, leading works by Adams, Norman and Ives on the American Soundscapes series, where she was mentored by John Adams and David Robertson. That same year, she was selected as the David A. Karetsky Conducting Fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival.
Passionate about music education, Ms. New enjoys working with the NJSO-affiliated Greater Newark Youth Orchestra. She was also guest conductor for the 2013 New Jersey All State Orchestra. Between 2007 and 2009, Ms. New conducted the Christchurch Youth Orchestra, which grew from 40 to 70 players under her leadership and performed upwards of nine concerts a year.

Ms. New earned the Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, where she studied with Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar. She previously graduated from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand with a Bachelor of Music (Honors) in violin performance.

Ms. New was awarded the Ansbacher Fellowship, in which she was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic to reside at the Salzburg Music Festival in 2012. In September 2014, at the invitation of Maestro Kurt Masur, she resided for three weeks in Leipzig, Germany as a Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Fellow, where she studied Mendelssohn’s music under Maestro Masur and conducted the Leipziger Symphonieorchester in a concert at the historic Lindensaal in Markkleeberg.