Spanish conductor José Luis Gómez has just renewed his contract with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra until the end of the 2026/27 season. Gómez was appointed musical director in Tucson in 2016 and at this time had a contract in force until 2024, so he still had two years of tenure left, which have been extended another three. José Luis Gómez began his musical career as a violinist, but came to international attention in 2010 after winning the First Prize of the Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt by unanimity of the jury. His performance in the competition earned him immediate appointment as Assistant Conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, a position created especially for him by Paavo Järvi and the orchestra immediately after the competition’s conclusion. José Luis Gómez was also Principal Conductor of the 1813 Teatro Sociale di Como Orchestra between 2012 and 2015.
Since José Luis Gómez took over in Tucson, there has been a significant increase in the number of subscribers and sponsors. Gómez has worked hard to introduce new outreach activities while continuing to support and develop the orchestra’s existing educational projects. He is also a champion of many lesser-known South American composers, whose works he programs together with other classical authors. Similarly, he has been responsible for commissioning new compositions, such as Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño for trumpet, whose US premiere took place in 2019 with Pacho Flores.
On the American continent, José Luis Gómez maintains a close relationship with the Edmonton Symphony and has worked with orchestras such as the Houston Symphony, the Ottawa National Arts Center Orchestra, the Vancouver, Colorado, Grand Rapids, Winnipeg and Alabama Symphonies, Chamber Orchestra Antonio, Rochester, Louisiana, Pasadena, and Elgin Philharmonics, and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the International Youth Philharmonic. In the south he has worked with the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and the National Orchestra of Peru. He is intensely active in Europe, where he has conducted orchestras such as the RTVE Symphony, Weimar Staatskapelle Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony, Karlsruhe Staatstheater Orchester, Basel Sinfonietta, Orquestra Sinfônica do Porto, Castilla y Leon Symphony, Milan Pomeriggi Musicali, Warsaw Symphony, SWR Radio Sinfonie-Orchester Stuttgart, Tenerife Symphony Orchestra or the Malaga Philharmonic. In 2019 he made a successful debut at the Berlin Komische Oper with Gabriela Montero as soloist. He recently conducted a tour of Belgium with the Flanders Symphony and Johannes Moser as soloist. In the Asia-Pacific area he has led the Macau Orchestra with Nemanja Radulovic, New Zealand Symphony, Australian National Academy of Music, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra and Daegu Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Other notable performances by José Luis Gómez include his debuts with the Moscow State Conservatory, the widely televised New Year’s Eve concert in Sofia and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra at their New Year’s concerts and some upcoming engagements include the National Symphony Orchestra. from Washington DC (Program with Yo Yo Ma and Paquito de Rivera), Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (With Stephen Hough, piano), or the Pacific, Colorado and Phoenix Symphonies. In the operatic arena, highlights include La Bohème at the Frankfurt Opera and a new production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Stuttgart Opera, La Forza del Destino in Tokyo with the New National Theatre, Don Carlo and Norma at The State Opera in Tbilisi, Georgia, La Traviata in concert version with the Sacramento Philharmonic, or Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni at the Teatro Sociale di Como, where he also conducted a spectacular production of Cavalleria Rusticana. He has recorded Bela Fleck’s Concerto No. 2 for banjo and orchestra, Juno Concerto, with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conducted the Hamburg Symphony and the talented young clarinettist Vladimir Soltan in the release of an album for MGD that collects the concertos for Nielson, Françaix and Debussy clarinet.
Perry So opens his first season as music director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra on Sunday 22 September with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The concert will take place in Woolsey Hall and will feature Lisa Williamson (soprano), Annie Rosen (alto), Chad Kranak (tenor) and Eric Greene (baritone) as soloists, with a chorus from three local choral groups, the Heritage Chorale of New Haven, the New Haven Chorale and the Yale Glee Club. The programme will conclude with Gathering Son, a short work for baritone and orchestra by Courtney Brian with lyrics by Tazeweel Thompson, which Greene himself will perform as soloist.
He was introduced as the NHSO‘s new principal conductor on Saturday 15 June at the ensemble’s annual collaboration with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, ARTIDEA, which took place on the outdoor stage of the New Haven Green. Perry will combine this new responsibility with his position as Music and Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, which he has held since the 2022/23 season. His contract in Navarra runs until the end of the 2024/25 season, although it was recently announced that he will be reappointed for a further three years until the end of the 2027/28 season.
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra is the fourth oldest orchestra in the United States, and its performances and accessible education programmes reach more than 40,000 regular audiences and 20,000 students each year. Innovative programming and a commitment to commissioning new works inspire greater audience participation and meaningful artistic and educational collaborations. Through the nationally acclaimed Harmony Fellowship programme and numerous award-winning education and community engagement programmes, the Symphony strives to be a leader in racial equity in the arts.
Perry So was born in Hong Kong in 1982, where he received early musical training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He later received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University, specialising in 20th century Central European music and literature. During this time, he founded an academic orchestra and conducted lyric productions with graduate students. In 2008, he studied conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore under Maestro Gustav Meier and won First Prize and Special Prize at the 5th St. Petersburg International Prokofiev Conducting Competition. Following this accolade, he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and later became part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Dudamel Fellowship Programme, and has since conducted some of the most important American, European and Asian orchestras, as well as being Artistic Collaborator of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain and of the Conducting Faculty of the Manhattan School of Music in New York.
Perry So formally begins his new responsibility as Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra this coming July 1, for an initial period of three seasons until June 30, 2027. His presentation as the new Music Director of the NHSO took place last Saturday, June 15, within the orchestra’s annual collaboration with the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, ARTIDEA, which was held on the open-air stage of the New Haven Green. Perry will combine this new responsibility with his position as Music and Artistic Director of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, which he has been holding since the 2022/23 season. With a contract in force until the end of the 2024/25 season, the orchestra recently announced its renewal after August 2025..
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra is the fourth oldest orchestra in the United States, its performances and accessible educational programs reach more than 40,000 regular audiences and 20,000 students each year. Innovative programming and dedication to promoting new work commissions inspire more engaged audience participation and meaningful artistic and educational collaborations. Through the nationally acclaimed Harmony Fellowship program, as well as numerous award-winning educational and community engagement programs, the Symphony strives to be a leader in racial equity in the arts.
Perry So was born in Hong Kong in 1982, where he received early musical training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He later graduated in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a specialization in 20th-century Central European music and literature. He served as Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Conducting Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, and on the conducting faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. As a student at Yale University he founded an orchestra and led the undergraduate opera company. He received his training as a conductor initially under James Sinclair and subsequently with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and received First and Special Prizes at the International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St Petersburg, Russia.
José Luis Gómez and Pacho Flores meet with the Walla Walla Symphony Orchestra for the US premiere of Historias de Flores y Tangos, new trumpet concerto by Daniel Freiberg, which will take place at Cordiner Hall next Tuesday, May 2 at 7 p.m. The concert was commissioned jointly by the WW Symphony, Oviedo Filarmonía, Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería and Arctic Philharmonic of Norway. This US premiere closes the cycle of premieres reserved for the orchestras that participated in the shared commission, so that the work becomes now available for any orchestra that wishes to program it.
Gómez and Flores had already met at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, of which the former is principal conductor, for the US premiere in January 2019 of the Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez, as the orchestra was part of the consortium of commissioners of this piece to the Mexican composer, together with the Nacional de México, the Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan and, once again, the Oviedo Filarmonía. Pacho returned to Tucson again as recently as last February, accompanied on this occasion by Manuel Hernández-Silva, with a program that again included a couple of US premieres: Salseando, trumpet concerto by Roberto Sierra, and Manuel Moreno Buendía’s Boceto Sinfónico.
Pacho will return to the US a couple of times in the upcoming months, first in June to perform Salseando by Sierra with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare at the Rady Shell, and then in July for his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut with Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl, performing Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño. For his part, and with a contract still in force until 2024, José Luis Gómez was renewed last summer in his position as Music Director of the Tucson Symphony until 2027, and has recently conducted orchestras such as the Indianapolis Symphony or the US National Symphony Orchestra.
