Perry So returns in the middle of the season to the podium of the Navarra Symphony, where he is Music and Artistic Director, to face a double program that he will offer in the usual subscription series at the Baluarte Auditorium in Pamplona on Thursday, February 29, and in the Auditorium of the Palacio Euskalduna in Bilbao, within the program of the Musika/Música Festival, on Sunday, March 3. In both programs the Swedish soprano Camila Tilling acts as soloist, in the first, which is titled The Voice of the Earth, she will provide her voice to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, which will be preceded by the absolute premiere of the work Climate Change, by Vicent Egea, commissioned by the Baluarte Foundation; in the second, as the protagonist of Francis Poulenc’s Stabat Mater, preceded by Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 6.
Perry So began his journey as Music and Artistic Director of the Navarra Symphony in the 2022/23 season, and starting next season he will combine with his new responsibility as Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the city that hosts the University from Yale, one of the most prestigious in the world and where Perry earned a degree in Comparative Literature.
Perry So has worked with the orchestras of Cleveland and Minnesota, the symphonies of Houston, Detroit, New Jersey, Nürenberg, Israel and Shanghai, the Chinese Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest of The Hague and the Szezecin and Zagreb philharmonics. He has been a frequent guest at Walt Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl as a Dudamel Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He led the Hong Kong Philharmonic with Lang Lang in celebrating the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China at the close of his four-year term as Associate Conductor. In Spain he has conducted the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra, Malaga Philharmonic, Navarra Symphony, Murcia Region Symphony and Asturias Symphony.
He received First Prize and Special Prize at the 5th International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St. Petersburg. He has recorded extensively with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra. His recording of the Barber and Korngold violin concertos with Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic was awarded the Diapason D’Or in 2012. Known for the enormous range of repertoire he conducts, including numerous world premieres on four continents, he has conducted productions of Cosí fan tutte, The Magic Flute, The Turn of the Screw, Giulio Cesare, Gianni Schicchi, Eugene Oneguin or Die Fledermaus. He has been an assistant to Edo de Waart, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel and John Adams.