Raymonda

Stanton Welch was born in Melbourne to Marilyn Jones OBE and Garth Welch AM, two of Australia's most gifted dancers of the 1960s and 1970s.  He joined The Australian Ballet, rising to the rank of leading soloist and performing various principal roles, before serving as Resident Choreographer. During his decades long career, Welch has choreographed over 100 works including audience favorites Madame Butterfly (1995), Clear (2001), and Divergence (1994). His work can be seen in the repertoire of The Australian Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and Birmingham Royal Ballet, among others. In July 2003, Welch was appointed Artistic Director of Houston Ballet, America's fourth-largest ballet company. Welch has choreographed more than 40 works for Houston Ballet, including Marie (2009) and spectacular stagings of Swan Lake (2006), La Bayadère (2010), Romeo and Juliet (2015), Giselle (2016), The Nutcracker (2016), Sylvia (2019), and the upcoming Raymonda (2025). Developing Houston Ballet into a choreographic Eden, Welch has commissioned over 30 works from notable choreographers such as Mark Morris, Aszure Barton, Dwight Rhoden, Trey McIntyre, and Justin Peck, while expanding the company’s repertoire with works from internationally acclaimed choreographers including George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Sir Kenneth MacMillan, John Neumeier, Twyla Tharp, and Jerome Robbins. Under Welch’s leadership, Houston Ballet has appeared across the globe including recent engagements in Tokyo, Dubai, Melbourne, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Welch continues to nurture the next generation of artists through the Houston Ballet Academy, a leading institution in dance education and training. 

A Russian composer, director and teacher, born in 1865 at St. Petersburg, Alexander Glazunov was well-known for his conservative, classic compositions. He first studied music with Balakirev, and later with Rimsky-Korsakov. They both influenced and promoted his first successful symphony, Op.5, 1881, which he composed at age 16. "Little Glinka," as he was called, performed his first symphony for the second time in Moscow. Similarly, his second symphony-poem, Stenka Razin was successful. His various compositions led to his fame in Russia as well as in internationally by age 21. Glazunov, became a Professor of Instrumentation at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1899, and in 1905 became its Director. Some of his famous compositions are; The Seasons, which is a one-act ballet created for Petipa; Raymonda (1898), Les ruses d‘amour (1900), The Seasons (1900), Scenes de Ballet which he wrote as gift for Russian Opera Orchestra at St. Petersburg. He arranged Chopin's Les Sylphides and with Rimsky, completed Borodin's opera Prince Igor. He also composed a number of symphonies, orchestral choral works, violin and piano concertos. Much as he was well-known as a conservative composer, he is also well known for his sharp musical mind which allowed him to memorize pieces of music after only one hearing. He left Russia in 1928 for Paris. He died there in 1936. At his request, he was interred in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral's cemetery in St. Petersburg.