Burlington Civic Symphony

Hailing from Williston, Vermont, Cole Marino is a classically trained conductor, baritone, and keyboardist. As a vocalist, Cole has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the New York Oratorio Society, and Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, among others. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 as a soloist in Vaughan William’s Serenade to Music under the baton of Leonard Slatkin. Cole has had the pleasure to work with such esteemed conductors as Vladimir Jurowski, Jane Glover, Roderick Cox, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolf, James Conlon, Ken-David Masur, Kent Tritle, Eric Milnes, Simon Halsey, Steven Reineke, and George Manahan. In 2023, Cole founded the Vermont Contemporary Chamber Collective, an ensemble dedicated to promoting the diversity and breadth of the chamber repertoire, and currently serves as the organization's Artistic Director. Music direction highlights include Bach’s Cantata BWV 211, Kafee Kantata (VCCC, 2023); the original 1944 version of Copland’s chamber ballet Appalachian Spring (VCCC 2022); and Into the Woods (Lyric Theatre, 2022). In 2019, Cole served as Assistant Conductor for the Chelsea Music Festival.

Cole's musical passions span from the likes of J.S. Bach to John Cage, Stephen Sondheim, and beyond, and he ardently believes that one’s musical life should transcend the conventional boundaries of genre, form, and tradition. Cole graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 2020, where he studied voice with Mignon Dunn.

Trained in the United States and Europe, Kim Diehnelt established her craft as conductor in both Finland and Switzerland, leading Baltic, Russian, and European ensembles. In Helsinki, Kim founded the Helsinki Camerata, a group dedicated to a chamber music approach to orchestral performance. Her pacing and style reflect an inherent understanding of rhetoric and dramatic flow, receiving praise for her "unusual talent to communicate through the orchestra to her audience."

Kim has been composing works for solo instruments, chamber, orchestral and choral ensembles since 2011 when, after decades on the conductor's podium, she "suddenly had something to say." Her style is best described as a "Nordic Palestrina" as her works possess a lyrical, vocal quality with an attention to beauty and the sense of an unfolding story. Kim was named the KISMET Foundation’s 2018 Artist-in-Residence and created the nature-inspired work Yarmouth Time for Violin and Cello which appears on the Trio Casals album "Moto Finale" released in December 2021. The Filharmonie Brno performance of Striadica: A Symphonic Passage was released on the album "Legends and Light, Vol. 2" in January 2022.