Christian Vásquez and Robert Lakatoš will work together for the first time this coming February 10, with the Polish Baltic Philharmonic to offer a program that includes Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Lakatoš recently offered this same concert in Spain together with Manuel Hernández-Silva and the Royal Philharmonic of Galicia. Vásquez is coming off garnering extraordinary reviews leading the Orchestre Pasdeloup and assisting Gustavo Dudamel in Tristán and Isolde at the Paris Opera, where he will return in April to direct a ballet performances.
Robert Lakatoš grew up in a musical family and began his studies at the age of seven in his hometown of Novi Sad at the hands of his father, Imre Lakatoš. He was the youngest student to graduate from the Novi Sad Academy of Arts, where he studied under renowned pedagogue Dejan Mihailović. He continued his training at the Zurich University of the Arts with Rudolf Koelman, where he received a Swiss Lyra Foundation Scholarship for Exceptionally Gifted Musicians, and has attended study programs with leading international violinists such as Aaron Rosand at the New York Summit Music Festival, and Julian Rachlin at the Vienna University of Music and Arts. Robert won first prize at the Pablo Sarasate Competition in Pamplona (2015), as well as previously first prize at the Mary Smart Concerto Competition (New York, 2013), and the prestigious Andrea Postacchini (Fermo, Italy, 2012) or Juventudes Musicals from Romania, who opened the doors to his international career on the main stages of the world.
Christian Vásquez has been Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, which he conducted on a notable tour of Europe that took them to London, Lisbon, Toulouse, Munich, Stockholm and Istanbul. He has also been Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra between 2013 and 2019 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest from 2015 to 2020. Following his debut with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in 2009, Christian Vásquez was named its Principal Guest Conductor between 2010 and 2013. He has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchester de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony, Salzburg Camerata, Russian State Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony. In North America he has conducted the National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, during his participation in their Young Artist Fellowship Program. He has worked with orchestras such as the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchester National du Capitole de Toulouse, Symphony of Galicia, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Prague Radio Symphony, Warsaw Beethoven Festival, Turku Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony, Poznan Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Mexico National, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Basel Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Estonian National, Gran Canaria Philharmonic or Ireland TEN National. His first operatic engagement in Europe was at the Norwegian Opera with Carmen. Upcoming engagements include the Opéra National de Paris as Gustavo Dudamel’s assistant and concerts in Poland, Spain, Norway, Israel, Korea and the US.
After making his debut with the Sinfónica de Baleares in Spain and appearing with the Sinfónica de Navarra, where he is Music and Artistic Director, at the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid within the Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid subscription series, Perry So returns to the US to conduct the Tucson Symphony on February 4 and 5. The program consists of Luigi Dallapiccola’s Piccola Musica Notturna, Schumann’s piano concerto with Michelle Cann as soloist, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, Italiana.
Perry So was born in 1982 in Hong Kong, where he received his early musical training in piano, organ, violin, viola, and composition. He received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a concentration 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 at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore under the tutelage of teacher Gustav Meier and in 2008 he received the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Edition of the Prokofiev International 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 and artistic collaborator of the Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, and is also a member of the Orchestra Conducting Department of the Manhattan School of Music. Since the 2022/23 season, he is Music and Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra.
Present in concert halls on five continents, Perry So has recently made his debut with the San Francisco Symphony, his European operatic debut at the Royal Danish Opera with The Magic Flute, and his American debut at the Yale Opera with Eugene Onegin. Outstanding performances include a tour of Italy with the Nuremberg Symphony, a seven-week tour of South Africa leading three different orchestras in which he conducted Verdi’s Requiem in Cape Town for the South African National Arts Festival, or his return to the podium of the San Francisco Symphony. He has had a long-standing collaboration with the Royal Danish Theater and the Royal Danish Orchestra both in the concert hall and in the opera and ballet pit. He has been a frequent guest at Walt Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and in 2013 he toured the Balkans leading the Zagreb Philharmonic in the first series of cultural exchanges established after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the Navarra, Málaga, Tenerife, Nuremberg, Israel, New Zealand, Houston, Detroit, New Jersey and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, the London, Szezcin, Seoul and China Philharmonics, the Residentie Orkest of The Hague and the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie of Koblenz. His work in the recording studio spans 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 January 2012. His broad musical interests include numerous World premieres on four continents, as well as reintroducing Renaissance and Baroque repertoire into symphony programs, most notably 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. Perry, his wife Anna and their daughter Caroline divide their time between Boston, Saint Paul, where Anna is Professor of History of Science at the University of Minnesota, and Pamplona.
Christian Vásquez returns to the Opéra National de Paris to assist Gustavo Dudamel in the rehearsals and performances of Tristan and Isolde that are taking place during the months of December, January and February, and will return again in April this year to conduct various ballet performances. Meanwhile he also appeared last week with the Orchestre Pasdeloup at the Philharmonie de Paris with which he got extraordinary reviews and immediately received two new invitations to return again in April this season as well as at the beginning of the next season.
The Orchestre Pasdeloup is the oldest active French orchestra. After finishing his musical studies, Jules Pasdeloup founded the Society of Young Artists in 1852, which recruited its musicians from among the students of the Conservatoire and offered its concerts at the Salle Herz. Encouraged by the results, Jules Pasdeloup created a new orchestra consisting on the best musicians and started to offer the “Concerts Populaires” on October 27, 1861 at the Cirque Napoléon on boulevard des Filles-du-Calvaire, intended for an audience hitherto excluded from musical evenings, and whose success was immediate and considerable. By founding the “Popular Concerts”, Jules Pasdeloup gave birth to a new concert form that quickly experienced many variations throughout France and also abroad. The “People’s Concert” became a true institution that played a decisive role in creating new audiences by introducing the German repertoire but also exerting a positive influence on French symphonic production.
After this long period in Paris and before returning to the Opéra de Paris to conduct the orchestra in performances of the dance company, Christian will lead the Baltic Philharmonic in Poland together with the violinist Robert Lakatoš and will spend several weeks in Venezuela working with EL SISTEMA orchestras, especially the Juan José Landaeta Orchestra, of which he is musical director. After that second period at the Opéra de Paris, Christian will return to Latin America as he will visit Colombia and Mexico before finishing off the season in Switzerland.
Pacho Flores begins in December his artistic residency with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which will be completed with two further visits to the British orchestra in May and July 2023 and close with the recording of a new album with its principal conductor, Domingo Hindoyan. In this first visit, Pacho will participate in the Spirit of Christmas concerts under the direction of Ian Tracey; in May, he will offer two French trumpet concerts by Tomasi and Jolivet; and in July he will perform again Salseando by Roberto Sierra, a concert co-commissioned and premiered by the orchestra back in 2020, and offer the UK premiere of Altar de Bronce, a new trumpet concerto by Gabriela Ortiz, commissioned together with the Galician Symphony (Hernández-Silva), New World Symphony (Carlos Miguel Prieto) and San Diego Symphony (Rafael Payare).
Pacho’s relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is very close, as it is the fourth season that Pacho will perform at the Royal Philharmonic Hall after his visits in the 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2021/22 seasons. The orchestra was part of the joint commission of three new trumpet concertos: Salseando, by Roberto Sierra, Altar de Bronce, by Gabriela Ortiz, and Concerto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera; along which Pacho has also performed Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de Otoño, a result of the same project of shared commissions, and Cantos y Revueltas, by Pacho himself.
This season Pacho is also resident artist with the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, with which he will offer two symphonic programs, both conducted by Manuel Hernández-Silva, and a chamber music concert with Jesús ‘Pingüino’ Gonzalez, included in the season of the Philharmonic Society of A Coruña. The symphonic programs include the Galician Youth Symphony Orchestra, with which he will perform Concierto de Otoño by Márquez and Albares, a flugelhorn concert by Flores himself; and the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, with D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezolano and the World premiere of Ortiz’s Altar de Bronce.
Manuel Hernández-Silva conducts two programs within the symphonic season of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra at the Teatro Colón, including the opening concert. In this first subscription concert, which will take place on Saturday, March 25, 2023, he will conduct a monograph on Johannes Brahms including the Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, with Frank Peter Zimmerman, and the Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68. On July 1, 2023 he will conduct his second program at the eighth subscription concert, with the Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and orchestra in E Flat Major, K. 364/320d by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Diarios VI by Gerardo Gandini, and Redes, by Silvestre Revueltas.
Before his first visit to Buenos Aires, he will make his debut with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National du Pays de la Loire and the Norwegian Arctic Philharmonic, and in between visits to Buenos Aires he will also maje his debut with the Galicia Symphony Orchestra, also in a double stay as he will dedicate a week to the Youth Orchestra and another to the professional orchestra, where he will conduct the World premiere of Altar de Bronce, the new concert for Pacho Flores by the Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, a shared commission between the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the New World Symphony and San Diego Symphony Orchestra.
After this engagement in Galicia, Hernández-Silva will return to the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia where, again in a period of two weeks, he will conduct two programs, the second of which including the American premiere of Concierto del Mar for Venezuelan Cuatro and orchestra, by Leo Rondón, with the composer himself as soloist. After his second concert in Buenos Aires, he will travel to Santiago to lead the Chilean National Symphony and will close the season at the Cesky Krumlov Festival leading the Prague Philharmonic and soloists Beatriz Díaz, soprano, Pablo García López, tenor, and Rafael Aguirre, guitar in a Spanish program, similar to the one he conducted last season with the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra.
Christian Vásquez conducts several concerts with various EL SISTEMA orchestras in Venezuela throughout these months of November and December, before heading to France to act as assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel at the Paris National Opera in the rehearsals and performances of Tristán and Isolde by Richard Wagner. During his stay in Venezuela, he will lead the Juan José Landaeta Orchestra (formerly the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra), of which he is Musical Director; of the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the main formation and flagship of the System of Children and Youth Orchestras of Venezuela.
The calendar of this extensive presence at the head of the formations of EL SISTEMA begins on November 20 with the Juan José Landaeta Symphony Orchestra, to which he will conduct a program that includes Wolf Totem, Concert for double bass and orchestra by Tan Dun with Edicson Ruiz on double bass and Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. On November 26, he will lead the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra with which he will perform Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns with Thibault Vieux on violin and the Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra by Efraín Oscher, again with Edicson Ruiz on double bass, and the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. On December 3 with the Gaêlica y la Bolívar group, he will conduct an extraordinary concert entitled A Night of Light. On December 7, this time with the Venezuelan Symphony, he will conduct the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and the Concert in A Major for clarinet and orchestra, both by W. A. Mozart, with clarinetist Andrés Nieves, and Symphony No. 9, New World, obyAntonín Dvořák. And on December 16 he will close this journey again with Bolívar and the participation of the Simón Bolívar National Choir conducting the Te Deum by Hector Berlioz.
Christian Vasquez has been Music Director of the Stavanger Orchestra in Norway, Principal Guest Conductor of the Gävle Symphony in Sweden and the Het Gelders Orkest in the Netherlands and currently holds the title of the Juan José Landaeta Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, heir to the Teresa Carreño Youth Symphony Orchestra. Vásquez comes from conducting the Tongyeong Festival Orchestra at the Isangyun International Cello Competition in South Korea
