This concert is the North Carolina Symphony debut for Kevin Fitzgerald.

American conductor Kevin Fitzgerald won the Special Prize for the Best Performance of the Contemporary Piece at the Mahler Competition in 2023. He is the first conductor to win this award, sponsored by the Mahler Foundation. In 2021, he was a Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellow and, beginning in 2019, has been awarded Career Assistance Grants by the Solti Foundation U.S. for four consecutive years.

Fitzgerald has been the Associate Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony since the 2022/23 season. There he has conducted over 35 performances, including a fully-staged production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. In the 2023/24 season, he makes his subscription debut with the Jacksonville Symphony and pianist Joyce Yang, records Sean Shepherd's Concerto for Ensemble with the University of Chicago's Grossman Ensemble, and makes his subscription debut with the Cape Symphony Orchestra. He will also return to the New York Philharmonic as a cover conductor for three programs, in addition to assisting Stéphane Denève at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Fitzgerald founded the ÆPEX Contemporary Performance ensemble in 2015 in order to perform and promote contemporary classical composers from historically under-represented backgrounds. Additionally, he co-produced and conducted Requiem for Orlando, a musical tribute to the victims of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando. Planned in under 48 hours, over 400 musical volunteers performed at Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to a full-capacity audience.