Perry So conducts the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal next Sunday and Monday, 10 and 11 May, in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal with a programme including Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, Stravinsky’s Symphony in three movements and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61. This is Perry’s second visit to Germany so far this year following his appearance before the Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz this past January when he conducted a very French programme with works by Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and Mozart’s Paris Symphony.
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He received a BA in literature from Yale University with a major in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, during which time he founded an academic orchestra and conducted the university’s opera company. He studied conducting initially with James Sinclair and later with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 Perry was awarded First Prize and Special Prize at the 5th St. Petersburg Prokofiev International Conducting Competition. Following this recognition he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and a member of the Department of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music. He is currently music director of the Sinfónica de Navarra and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Perry So has made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, as well as his European operatic debut with the Royal Danish Opera and The Magic Flute. Highlights include a tour to Italy with the Nuremberg Symphony and a seven-week tour of South Africa conducting three different orchestras in Verdi’s Requiem. Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the symphony orchestras of Navarra, Malaga, Tenerife, Nuremberg, Israel, New Zealand, Houston, Detroit, New Jersey and Shanghai, the London, Szezcin, Seoul and China Philharmonics, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie in Koblenz. In 2013 he toured the Balkan Peninsula conducting the Zagreb Philharmonic in the first series of cultural exchanges established after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Perry So’s work in the recording studio encompasses a wide range of 20th century British, French and Russian music with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his album of Barber and Korngold Violin Concertos with Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic received the Diapason d’Or in 2012. His wide-ranging musical interests include numerous world premieres on four continents, as well as the reintroduction of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire into symphonic programmes, notably championing the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau. His work with young musicians has taken him to the Australian Youth Orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, the Round Top Festival, the Manhattan School of Music, the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and the Yale School of Music.
Marina Heredia participates in the New York Flamenco Festival with a programme entitled De lo jondo a Lorca that includes a selection of poems and songs that Lorca immortalised in his works, mixing the intensity of flamenco with the poetic lyricism of the author. Accompanied by her inseparable guitarist José Quevedo ‘El Bolita’, Marina transports the audience to the deepest roots of Andalusian culture, reliving the legacy of the poet from Granada with every note and verse. The concert will take place on Friday 14 March in the Merkin Concert Hall of the Kaufman Music Center at 8pm. Marina has just had an outstanding presence at the Cartagena Music Festival in Colombia where he gave three concerts, two with the Castile and Leon Symphony Orchestra and Thierry Fisher with programmes covering works by Falla and Lorca as well as with his flamenco quintet.
Marina Heredia is definitely the most internationally demanded singer for this repertoire, just in the last two seasons she could be seen at the Konzerthaus and the Berlin Philharmonie with the Berlin Radio Symphony conducted by Pablo Heras Casado; the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, in the Laieszhalle of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, or the Lausitz Festival in Görlitz, and has sung with orchestras of the importance of the Chicago Symphony or San Francisco Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, of which she was resident artist and with which she premiered in Spain En Libertad!, a new work for cantaora and orchestra by José Quevedo and Joan Albert Amargós, commissioned and premiered by the Duisburger Philharmoniker.
Other important orchestras which Marina has sung with are the Orchestre National de Lille, Orquestra Sinfônica da Casa da Música do Porto, Ópera de Rouen, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with whom she recorded El Amor Brujo under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado or the production by La Fura del Baus for the Granada Festival as well as with the Sinfónicas de Navarra under the baton of Perry So, Sinfónica de RTVE, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia with Roberto Forés, North Macedonian Philharmonic with Christian Vásquez or Sinfónica de Castilla y León under the baton of José Trigueros and Thierry Fisher. Among the upcoming engagements it highlights the concert with the San Diego Symphony in the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park under the baton of Rafael Payare.
Leo Rondón makes his debut with the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla to participate on 6 and 7 March in two concertante works of a markedly Latin character with Hernández-Silva and Pacho Flores, with whom he regularly collaborates. These works are Concerto Venezolano for trumpet and orchestra by Paquito D’Rivera, winner of a Latin Grammy, and Cantos y Revueltas. Fantasía Concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and Orchestra, by the trumpeter himself, in whose recording for Deutsche Grammophon Leo also participates. The concerts will take place at the Teatro de la Maestranza at 20:00.
Leo comes from Poland to play his own Concierto del Mar, for Venezuelan cuatro with the Baltic Philharmonic Orchestra of Gdansk conducted by Christian Vásquez, and will soon be seen at the Auditori de Barcelona with the Banda Municipal de Barcelona again playing in Cantos y Revueltas conducted by Pascual Vilaplana. Previously he could also be seen with the Duisburger Philharmoniker conducted by Alondra de la Parra and this season he can still be seen again in Spain playing the Concierto del Mar with the Orquesta de Extremadura and Silva.
Following the premiere of his Concierto del Mar, Rondón is now completing the composition of a new concerto for four and orchestra entitled Concierto del Llano, which will be the second in a trilogy. He will also continue his work in the artistic organisation of the PAAX GNP Festival, chaired by Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra, which will take place again in June 2025 in Mexico’s Riviera Maya. He continues to work with maestro Alexis Cárdenas and his quartet, and with a duo with French pianist Thomas Enhco, with whom he released an album together with Chilean tenor Emiliano González Toro, in homage to singer Violeta Parra. Known as Leo Rondón, Leonidas Rondón (Guama, Yaracuy, 1984), who was an outstanding podium participant in the Festival La Siembra del Cuatro in Venezuela, has collaborated with the Quatuor Debussy, Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata and the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. Also with orchestras such as the Arctic Philharmonic of Norway, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Orquesta de Valencia, Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Orquesta de Extremadura, Sinfónica de Navarra, Sinfónica del Vallés or Filarmónica de Málaga. For years he organised, together with maestro Cristóbal Soto, the summer course Música Criolla Venezolana, a Venezuelan music teaching camp in the city of Mirecourt, France. He is currently working on his solo project, Leo Rondón Project.
Perry So conducts this week the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra in a very interesting programme combining the work of the Navarrese Fernando Remacha (1898-1984), Jesus Christ on the Cross, with Bruckner’s 6th Symphony, for which he has assembled a cast formed by the soprano Andrea Jiménez, contralto Leticia Vergara, tenor Guillen Munguía, bass Iosu Yeregui and the Coral de Cámara de Pamplona. The concerts will take place on February 27th in the Baluarte Auditorium in Pamplona and on the 28th in the Teatro Gaztambide in Tudela, both days at 19:3 pm.
Perry So conducted the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie past 19 January in the Hunsrückhalle in Simmern with a programme including Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 Paris, the Piano Concerto No. 2 and the Allegro appassionato for piano and orchestra, Op. 70 by Saint-Saëns, with pianist Anny Hwang as soloist, and Francis Poulenc’s Sinfonietta. Shortly afterwards he conducted Verdi’s La Traviata at the Baluarte in Pamplona and the Kursaal of San Sebastián in a production by the Sferisterio de Macerata and in short he will conduct the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal. A dynamic and transformative presence in concert halls on five continents, Perry So is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra and Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Under his leadership, the Navarre Symphony Orchestra has toured to critical acclaim, widely lauded for the “artistic vitality” of its programming, and the ensemble, Spain’s oldest orchestra, recognized as currently being at “one of the finest points in its history.”
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early training in piano, organ, violin, viola and composition. He received a BA in Literature from Yale University with a major in Central European music and literature of the modernist period, during which time he founded an academic orchestra and conducted the university’s opera company. He studied conducting initially with James Sinclair and later with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 he received the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Edition of the International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St. Petersburg. Following this recognition he was appointed Assistant Conductor and then Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra, and member of the Department of Conducting at the Manhattan School of Music.
Abraham Cupeiro, who recently toured the UK with some of the country’s leading orchestras, now returns to the island to perform with the Scottish BBC Symphony Orchestra in the Celtic Connections series alongside Finnish folk stars Frigg and conducted by Janne Nisonen. The concert will take place on 19 January at Glasgow’s City Hall at 19:30.
A builder and multi-instrumentalist, what characterises Abraham Cupeiro is the recovery of instruments lost in time and using them to create new sonorities and imbricate them in music that is alien to them. He studied trumpet at the RCSMM, and later completed a master’s degree in Early Music Performance at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. However, although he is classically trained, he has always been attracted to all kinds of music. Thus, from an early age he has been a member of folk, jazz and early music groups. As an instrumentalist, he stands out for being one of the few people who plays the Karnyx (Celtic trumpet from the Iron Age). He was recently invited to try out the Tintignac Karnyx, which is the only one that appeared in its entirety in 2004. He has rescued from oblivion instruments rooted in classical culture such as the Greek Aulos and the Roman Cornu. He is also the promoter of an ancestral instrument in the Galician tradition: the corna. An instrument that his grandfather played and that appears in the illuminations of Alfonso X.
His interest in organology has led him to build up a collection of more than 200 instruments from all over the world and from different periods. It is a collection that he teaches in the form of a concert-monologue under the name Resonando en el Pasado (Resonating in the Past). Abraham recovers and builds different instruments, and performs with them from his own music to music of today, and mixes them with modern formations. These blends can be seen in his work Compromiscuo with Belarusian accordionist Vadzim Yukhnevich, as well as in works written especially for him such as Wladimir Rosinsky’s Concierto Misterio with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia. Other composers who have written for Abraham include Bernd Redman, Enrique Rueda and Mark Pogolski. Os Sons Esquecidos (The Forgotten Sounds) is a project that was recorded with the Filharmonía de Galicia on the Warner Classics label. After its premiere, it has been performed with different orchestras in Spain, Europe and America.
In 2018 Abraham released a new project: PANGEA, which was recorded in November 2019 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of London at Abbey Road Studios, and was released in September 2020 on the Warner Classics label, and in 2024 he launched the recording of a new project, MYTHOS, again with the RPO, which was presented in Spain with the Oviedo Filarmonía and this season can be seen with the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada or the Sinfónica de Bilbao. Among the orchestras with which he has played are the Sinfónica de Galicia, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Orquesta Sinfónica de Bilbao, Orchestre National de Bretagne, Kymi Sinfonietta, Vaasa City Orchestra, etc. He was requested by the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja for the project Les Adieux, at La Philharmonie in Berlin and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg among others. He has composed the soundtrack for the film Maria Solinha and collaborates with the 14th Street company of the Oscar-winning Hans Zimmer. He regularly collaborates in Adolfo Domínguez fashion shows with live performances. He also works for the science outreach project Neuston 3, which aims to raise awareness of the importance of the ocean in our lives.
