American conductor of Hong Kong origin Perry So has been appointed as the new Musical and Artistic Director of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, a position in which he succeeds Manuel Hernández-Silva. With an initial three-year contract, which will be effective from September 1, 2022, maestro Perry So has been the orchestra’s favorite in the polls. According to the statement from the orchestra itself, the choice of Maestro So has been the product of a rigorous participatory process that has lasted for several months. It began last year with a first phase of consultations and proposals submitted for consideration by the Orchestra, after whose decision the Board of Trustees of Fundación Baluarte proceeded to approve the candidacy… in the choice of maestro So “other criteria have also weighed in addition to his talent as a director, such as his wide and varied curriculum, his international projection and his artistic concerns”.
Conductor Perry So was born in Hong Kong in 1982, where he received early musical training in piano, organ, violin, viola, and composition. He later earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a specialization in 20th-century Central European music and literature. During that period he founded an academic orchestra and conducted lyrical productions with the graduates. In 2008 he studied conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore under the tutelage of Maestro Gustav Meier, receiving the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Edition of the St. Petersburg Prokofiev International Conducting Competition. After this recognition he was appointed Assistant Director and then Associate Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and later he will be invited to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra.
Having already consolidated his presence on five continents, Perry So has recently debuted with the San Francisco Symphony and has occupied the pits of the Royal Danish Opera -The Magic Flute- and the Yale Opera -Eugene Onegin- as opera director. Among the latest milestones in his career, three important tours stand out: a tour of Milan conducting the Nuremberg Symphony, another through the Balkans in 2013 with the Zagreb Philharmonic, and a third seven-week tour of South Africa conducting three orchestras in which he performed Verdi’s Requiem in the framework of the South African National Arts Festival.
Besides these projects and invitations, Perry So has conducted more than 30 orchestras around the world, including the San Francisco Symphony, the National Orchestra of Wales, the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, the New Zealand Symphony, the Shanghai Symphony, the Residentie Orkest of The Hague or the London Philharmonic, as well as half a dozen Spanish orchestras. He has also served as assistant to such renowned teachers as Edo de Waart, Esa Pekka-Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel and John Adams.
Perry So is a member of the Music Conducting faculty at the Manhattan School of Music and also has a large body of recordings to his credit leading the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra, repeatedly earning recognition from the criticism and being laureate in 2021 with the Diapason d’Or.
Perry So returns to Spain to conduct again the Navarre Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias and the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra. In Navarre, he will also have the participation of the Orfeón Pamplonés in a program including works for choir and orchestra by Brahms and the rarely programmed Symphony in C by Paul Dukas. Immediately after Navarre, Perry will join the OSPA, an orchestra with which he has a long history of collaborations, where he will conduct Nikolai Luganski in Medtner’s Concerto No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Pathetic Symphony. He will finish his Spanish tour in Tenerife, where he will conduct Pablo Ferrández with Tchaikovsky’s Rococó Variationsand Borodin’s Symphony No. 2. Perry should be conducting these days the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and then what would be his second appearance with the San Francisco Symphony, but both commitments postponed due to the COVID19 restrictions.
Perry So has worked, among others, with the Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the Houston, Detroit, New Jersey, Israel and Shanghai Symphony Orchestras, the Chinese Philharmonic and the Residentie Orkest in The Hague. He has been a frequent guest at the Walt Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl as a Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic with Lang Lang in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China at the closing of his four-year term as Associate Conductor, and led a tour of the Zagreb Philharmonic in the Balkan Peninsula.
Perry So received the First Prize and the Special Prize at the 5th Prokofiev International Conducting Competition in St. Petersburg. His recording of the Barber and Korngold violin concertos with Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic received the Diapason D’Or in January 2012. He has done many recordings with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra. He is known for the enormous variety of repertoire that he conducts, including numerous world premieres on four continents. He has directed productions of Cosí fan tutte, The Magic Flute, The Turn of the Screw, Giulio Cesare, Gianni Schicchi, and Die Fledermaus. His commitment to young people has led him to work with the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Round Top Festival, the Manhattan School of Music, the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts and the Yale School of Music. He has also been assistant to Edo de Waart, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel and John Adams. Born in Hong Kong, he holds a Degree in Comparative Literature from Yale University.
Perry So, conductor Music and Artistic Director of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra A dynamic and transformative presence in concert halls on five continents, Perry So is currently Artistic Director and Chief Conductor...
Marina Heredia returns to the Galician Symphony for a two-week stay in which she will present a double program: On May 16 and 17 she will sing El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla in the auditoriums of Ferrol and Pontevedra, and the following week, on the 24th and 25th, already at the Palacio de la Ópera de Coruña, she will star in the Spanish premiere of En LIbertad! El camino de los gitanos (In Freedom! The journey of the Gipsies), a work composed together by José Quevedo ‘Bolita’ and Joan Albert Amargós, in which she shares solo roles with Quevedo himself on flamenco guitar and Paquito González on percussion. Both programs will be conducted by maestro Jose Trigueros, who also conducted she on two other previous visits to the Galician Symphony in which the Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca and orchestrated by Trigueros himself, were performed. In freedom! is the result of a commission from the Duisburger Philharmoniker, with which it was premiered in July 2023.
Marina Heredia is definitely the most demanded singer internationally for this repertoire, only in the last two seasons she could be seen at the Konzerthaus and the Philharmonie of Berlin together with the Berlin Radio Symphony and Pablo Heras-Casado; the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin for a project with mandolinist Avi Avital, in the Laieszhalle of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg for the Martha Argerich Festival, or the Lausitz Festival in Görlitz.
Marina has sung with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Orchester National de Lille, Orquestra Sinfônica da Casa da Música de Porto, the Rouen Opera or the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which he recorded El Amor Brujo under the direction of Pablo Heras-Casado or the production of La Fura del Baus for the Granada Festival under the baton of Manuel Hernández-Silva as well as with the Navarra Symphony under the baton of Perry So, RTVE under the direction, again, of Hernández-Silva, the Symphony of the Region of Murcia with Roberto Forés or the North Macedonia Philharmonic with Christian Vásquez
Marina Heredia will sing El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla with the Symphony Orchestra of the Region of Murcia under the baton of Roberto Forés on November 16 and 17 at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium in Murcia and the Infanta Elena Auditorium in Águilas, respectively. Marina returns to El Amor Brujo after closing last season with the enormous success of En Libertad. El camino de los gitanos, a new work by José Quevedo “Bolita” and Joan Albert Amargós that was commissioned and premiered by the Duisburger Philharmoniker.
This premiere was part of an artistic residency of the cantaora in the season of the German orchestra, with which she also sang El Amor Brujo. Marina will perform again this immortal work by Falla along with the Spanish premiere of En Libertad with the Galician Symphony Orchestra and conductor José Trigueros, under whose baton she will also perform Canciones Españolas Antiguas by Federico García Lorca accompanied by the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville.
Marina Heredia is definitely the most in-demand singer internationally for this repertoire. Only last year and in Germany, she appeared at the Konzerthaus, the Philharmonie and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, at the Laieszhalle of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and at the Lausitz Festival in Görlitz. Marina has performed with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony, Orchestre National de Lille, Orquestra Sinfônica da Casa da Música do Porto, the Rouen Opera, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with which she recorded El Amor Brujo under the baton of Pablo Heras-Casado, or the production of La Fura del Baus for the Granada Festival under the baton of Manuel Hernández-Silva, as well as with the Navarre Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Perry So or the RTVE Orchestra, again under Hernández-Silva.
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