After a rigorous search process with nearly one hundred applicants, the Music Director Search Committee, co-chaired by LSO musicians and board members Jean Bae and Dr. Read Pukkila-Worley, is thrilled to announce the four conductors who will lead the orchestra during the 2022-23 season as their audition for Longwood Symphony Orchestra’s next Music Director. On behalf of the entire committee, we could not be more excited to feature these incredible conductors this season. All four candidates for the position show an immense amount of talent, musicality, and commitment to using music as a force for healing and engaging the community. This next phase of the process will allow each finalist to lead the orchestra through a full cycle of rehearsals, culminating in a performance for the public. LSO's next Music Director will be chosen from these four finalists by summer of 2023 after the conclusion of the 2022-23 season.

Buy Tickets

SUBSCRIBE

Jorge Soto, Conductor
October 29, 2022 Concert

Jorge Soto is a Venezuelan conductor and violinist with an active and diverse career both in North and South America. Currently, he is the Principal Conductor of the New Philharmonia Orchestra, the Principal Guest Conductor of the Massachusetts Symphony Orchestra, and the Music Director of the Sistema Side-by-Side Orchestra at Longy School of Music.

In addition to his regular posts, Mr. Soto has collaborated with several orchestras, most recently the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has twice conducted the Boston Symphony Chamber Players: first in October 2019 for a performance of Stravinsky’s Octet at Jordan Hall, and again at Symphony Hall in December 2020, leading the ensemble in Elena Langer’s Five Reflections on Water. The latter performance was filmed and released as part of a BSO streaming concert in January 2021. Mr. Soto also served as assistant or cover conductor on several occasions throughout the BSO’s 2020-21 online season. In addition, he assisted Gustavo Dudamel in the preparation of Puccini’s Turandot with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in December 2015. Also a passionate educator, he has worked with orchestras at Assumption University and Clark University.

Born in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, Mr. Soto is a product of El Sistema, an innovative program that uses classical music as a vehicle for social change. He began his musical studies in Venezuela at the Vicente Emilio Sojo State Conservatory, later studying violin at the Latin American Academy of Violin under Rhio Sanchez and José Francisco Del Castillo. A founding member of the Simón Bolívar National Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, he has also performed with the Youth Orchestra of the Americas and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. He remains very active in El Sistema in Venezuela, where he teaches violin, coaches chamber music, and conducts orchestras around the country, including serving as a guest conductor with the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Soto graduated with a Master of Music degree in conducting from the New England Conservatory. His conducting teachers and mentors include Harold Farberman, Stephen Tucker, Jani Telaranta, and Charles Peltz. On violin, he has studied with Sophie Vilker, Janne Malmivaara, Peter Sulski, and Timothy Schwarz.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Ballade for Orchestra
ASSAD Violin Concerto
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 7

Kristo Kondakçi, conductor
Adrian Anantawan, violin

TICKETS

Benefiting Shelter Music Boston

Kristo Kondakçi, Conductor
December 3, 2022 Concert

Albanian–American conductor Kristo Kondakçi occupies a unique platform as a conductor and creative entrepreneur.

As Music Director of the Kendall Square Orchestra, the Narragansett Bay Symphony, and the Eureka Ensemble, he has distinguished himself as a talented and innovative conductor.

Kondakçi began his career in 2014, appearing in performances with the Albanian National Orchestra which received critical acclaim with the Albanian press and public. He continues to enjoy a close relationship with the National Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Albania. He made his European opera debut with the Vienna Summer Music Festival Opera in 2018 and his U.S. opera debut with Boston’s Enigma Chamber Opera in 2020.

The first conductor ever to be officially hired by a biotech company, Kondakçi helped form the Kendall Square Orchestra (K²O) in 2018 together with Elena Spencer and Kelly Clark — with the mission to connect professionals from across the diverse academic and corporate community of Kendall Square through music. Under his leadership, the orchestra has built a community of 70+ musicians that represent over 50 local institutions.

In 2019, he conducted K²O’s inaugural “Symphony for Science” at Boston’s Symphony Hall, an innovative event bringing together local corporate sponsors, community organizations, and audiences to raise awareness, funds, and hope for healthcare and STEM education causes. Now in its fourth year, “Symphony for Science” has raised over $120,000 to support local benefiting organizations.

Kondakçi is a passionate advocate for the power of music to bring people together to inspire them to connect deeply with themselves and others and choose a life of passion, purpose, and self-responsibility. In 2017, this belief inspired him to launch Eureka Ensemble — with the mission to nurture social impact through music. Eureka’s community-intensive programming and performances have been widely praised by PBS, NPR, and the Boston Globe, among other outlets.

In 2018, Kondakçi co-founded the Women’s Chorus (TWC) to connect women experiencing homelessness or poverty in Boston with the healing power of music. The program has impacted more than 100 of Boston’s most vulnerable women from diverse backgrounds with an age span of 17 to 82.

Kondakçi received an Urban Service Award in 2019 from the Berklee School of Music for his work with Eureka Ensemble and the Women’s Chorus. A NowThis News feature on the chorus entitled "It's great to be treated like a human again” was published in August of 2018 and has since been viewed over 3 million times, inspiring similar programs to pop up across the globe.

In March 2020, after the pandemic lockdowns fell into place, Kondakçi joined a team of physicians and musicians led by Dr. Ronald Hirschberg and Dr. Lisa Wong to launch “Boston Hope Music” (BHM), a music & wellness program which was delivered to patients at Boston Hope Medical Center (a field hospital in Boston established to care for patients recovering from COVID-19) to augment the healing process. After the success of this program in spring 2020, the BHM team partnered with the New England Conservatory and Massachusetts General Hospital to focus on the needs of frontline healthcare workers, offering music lessons and songwriting sessions to help cope with stress from the pandemic. Once vaccination centers opened, BHM sent musicians to perform for members of the public receiving their vaccinations at each of the major centers in Boston, including Fenway Park, the Reggie Lewis Center and the Hynes Convention Center, among others.

Kondakçi is dedicated to educating the next generation of musicians and performers. In 2019, he served as interim director of orchestral studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for one term, leading the graduate conducting program in addition to conducting the university orchestras. He has also made a significant contribution to the musicological research of Gustav Mahler’s music through his reconstruction of the original version of Mahler's 1st Symphony (2012). He currently teaches conducting in a private studio and coaches chamber music at Harvard University as a non-resident music tutor with Pforzheimer House. He has also guest lectured at the Longy School of Music and at New England Conservatory.

Off the podium, Kondakçi is passionate about the intersection of music and business. Iin 2018, he designed a leadership development program with Kendall Square Orchestra called “Leading Tone: Transforming Business Through Music”. The program links best practices from the world of music with specific, actionable business behaviors and provides a transformational learning experience for leaders at every level by using ‘conducting an orchestra’ as a metaphor for teamwork and leadership. Since 2018, he has led workshops in Boston with leaders from corporations spanning 12 countries across 4 continents, such as PWC and Kinden Corp.

Kondakçi is also an active public speaker. He has been a featured speaker at TEDxBoston (2018, 2021) and the League of American Orchestras (2019). In his spare time, he volunteers with TEDxYouth@Boston to coach and mentor young speakers.

Kondakçi lives in Boston with his wife.

Saturday, March 18, 2023

BOULANGER: D’un matin de printemps (Of a Spring Morning)
SIMON The Block
HAYDN Trumpet Concerto in Eb
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2

Jotaro Nakano, conductor
Benjamin Wright, trumpet

Benefiting The Augustus A. White III Institute for Healthcare Equity

TICKETS

Jotaro Nakano, Conductor
March 18, 2023 Concert

Japanese-American conductor Jotaro Nakano is a Southern California native who is now living in Baltimore, Maryland, pursuing a doctorate degree under the instruction of Marin Alsop at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. As an impassioned citizen artist, Jotaro is always seeking to connect and inspire underprivileged communities with the deeply moving and uplifting powers of art and music.

In 2021, Jotaro was appointed as the Peabody Arts in Health Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Building upon the partnership of both institutions, the Arts in Health Fellowship was created to integrate music with medicine in places of healthcare for the medical community of Baltimore. Through meaningful collaborations both with artists and medical professionals, Jotaro explores the healing possibilities of art and music within clinical environments. Jotaro’s most recent projects have included the “Johns Hopkins Hospital Pandemic Playlist,” a series of playlists curated from over three hundred submissions from our hospital staff; and “Music for H.O.P.E.,” a video concert dedicated to our medical workers, recorded in Johns Hopkins’ historic Hurd Hall.

Since its founding in 2019, Jotaro has served as director and conductor of the Chamber String Orchestra of the SA’Oaxaca Strings International Music Festival in Oaxaca, Mexico. SA’Oaxaca is the first tuition-free chamber string music festival in Oaxaca with the mission to provide “excellent educational opportunities to underserved Mexican string instrumentalists, and increase the study and promotion of Latin American and Hispanic chamber music compositions.” Since its founding, SA’Oaxaca has welcomed hundreds of Mexican musicians and performed for countless communities and audiences. Jotaro is privileged to work with these talented students through this intercultural exchange of art.

Previously, Jotaro served as Music Director of the Ann Arbor Camerata, Cover Conductor for the Baltimore Symphony, and Conducting Fellow of the Long Beach Symphony. Jotaro has conducted orchestras in Mexico, the Czech Republic, Romania, and all across the United States. With every new project, Jotaro’s commitment is to maximize artistic collaboration to fill the world with wonder and hope.

Saturday, May 20, 2023

STILL Can’t You Line ‘Em
GRIFFES Poem for Flute and Orchestra
CHAMINADE Concertino for Flute
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 5

Avlana Eisenberg, conductor
Anthony Trionfo, flute

Benefiting YWCA Cambridge

TICKETS

Avlana Eisenberg, Conductor
May 20, 2023 Concert

Acclaimed conductor Avlana Eisenberg is a passionately committed advocate for emerging and underrepresented American composers, new works, and making symphonic music accessible for all. Hailed as “an imaginative and enterprising conductor,” she is Music Director of the Boston Chamber Symphony and has led orchestras throughout the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom.

Eisenberg’s discography includes recordings with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This May, Naxos released her world premiere recording, William Grant Still: Summerland, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Praised as “stunning” by The New York Times and selected as Album of the Week by SiriusXM, the recording includes 13 world premieres of orchestral music by Still, who was known as the “Dean of Afro-American Composers” during his lifetime but largely neglected since his death in 1978. ClassicalCDs.com notes, “This composer could not have better advocates than what we have here. The playing of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is superbly accomplished and musically involving, and they are expertly led by Avlana Eisenberg.” Eisenberg’s earlier recording of violin concertos of Sibelius and Barber and the world premiere recording of Ben-Haim’s Three Songs Without Words with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV and violinist Zina Schiff was hailed as “persuasive” and “finely balanced” by Gramophone Magazine, and “strongly recommended” by Fanfare. Her upcoming releases include an all-Hovhaness album with the Salzburg Chamber Soloists and a recording of works by Ravel and Ben-Haim with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

As Music Director of the Boston Chamber Symphony, Eisenberg has been credited with extending and deepening their impact in the community by making symphonic music accessible and riveting for audiences of all ages and backgrounds. In addition to mainstage and educational concerts, she has brought music to the community in non-traditional venues, including WBUR Radio-sponsored concerts in a local brewery, and the Boston Chamber Symphony’s Healing Arts Initiative in collaboration with Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to bring symphonic music to hospital staff, patients, and families. Committed to amplifying diverse compositional voices, Eisenberg and the Boston Chamber Symphony developed the “Sounds of America” series to showcase the life and music of underrepresented American composers. Their debut video, released in 2021, features a multimedia performance of “Can’t You Line ‘Em” by William Grant Still. In demand as a guest conductor, Eisenberg has also performed with ensembles at noted summer festivals including the Edinburgh Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Festival at Sandpoint, and in such venues as the Mozarteum, the Hungarian Radio Hall, and the Granada Theater.

Eisenberg regularly champions the work of contemporary composers, such as Kevin Puts, Faye Chiao, and David Biedenbender. She has conducted dozens of world premieres and served as conductor for the Juventas New Music Ensemble—a group that exclusively performs works by young composers. Eisenberg has also commissioned new works, including Banding Together, an operatic adaptation of Musicians of Bremen, the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which was premiered by the Boston Chamber Symphony at a sold-out family concert.

Recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to work at the Paris National Opera, Eisenberg received her undergraduate degree at Yale University, where she founded and conducted the Silliman Symphony and was named one of Glamour Magazine’s Top Ten College Women for her stellar academic record and strong leadership skills. She earned graduate degrees in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Michigan and the Peabody Institute, and has participated in masterclasses by such renowned conductor-pedagogues as Michael Tilson Thomas, David Zinman, Gerard Schwarz, Marin Alsop, and Larry Rachleff. A violinist by training, Eisenberg’s primary teacher was Heifetz protégé Erick Friedman.

TICKETS

For questions about the LSO Music Director Search, the committee may be reached via email at mdsearch@longwoodsymphony.org.

Announcing the Music Director Finalists & 2022-23 Season

Saturday, October 29, 2022