Maximiano Valdés, director titular
MAXIMIANO Valdés
In February 2008, Chilean conductor Maximiano Valdés was named Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony in San Juan. Before, he had a 16-year tenure as Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, where he is now the orchestra’s Conductor Laureate. Also, he is the former Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic. Mr. Valdes served as Chief Conductor of both the orchestra and opera at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile, where he returns annually for both symphonic and opera performances. In March 2010, Mr. Valdés also accepted the position of Artistic Director of the famed Festival Casals in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Born in Santiago, Chile, Maximiano Valdés began his studies in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music in Santiago and continued his studies at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he took courses in composition and conducting. Completing his diploma in piano, he decided to concentrate entirely on conducting and enrolled in the conducting classes of Franco Ferrara in Bologna, Siena, and Venice, and worked with Sergiu Celibidache in Stuttgart and Paris. In 1976 Mr. Valdés was engaged as Assistant Conductor at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, and the following year was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood, where he worked with Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. He won First Prize at the Nicolai Malko Competition in Copenhagen, First Prize at the Vittorio Gui Competition in Florence, and Second Prize at the Rupert Foundation Conducting Competition in London.
Mr. Valdés made his American symphonic debut in October 1987 with the Buffalo Philharmonic and was immediately re-invited for the following season. After a successful return to the orchestra in 1989, he was appointed Music Director, a position he held for almost 10 years. In North America he has guest conducted many of the leading orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis, National, Montreal, Baltimore, Seattle, Houston, Dallas and New World symphonies and the Calgary Philharmonic. Summer festival appearances have included engagements at the Caramoor, Interlochen, Grand Teton, Music Academy of the West and Grant Park festivals.
In addition to regular appearances with the Buffalo Philharmonic, recent and upcoming engagements include guest conducting the Indianapolis, Vancouver, Colorado, Phoenix, San Diego, Alabama and Toledo symphonies; the Louisiana Philharmonic; the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa; and the Eastern Music and Chautauqua festivals. Equally active as an international guest conductor, he has lead the Dresden Philharmonie, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw, Krakow and Katowice Philharmonics, Nice Opera Orchestra, Lisbon Philharmonic, Israel Chamber Orchestra and all of the major Spanish orchestras; the Malaysian Philharmonic; the State Symphony Orchestra of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo Opera Orchestra and Philharmonica of Minas Gerais in Brazil; the Buenos Aires Philharmonic at the Teatro Colon; and in Mexico, the Mexico City Philharmonic, Mexico National Symphony Orchestra, and UNAM Philharmonic. In October 2011, Mr. Valdés led the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in a concert for the Pope at the Vatican, and he was one of the first international conductors to conduct the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Cuba in Havana in January 2016.
An experienced opera conductor who has led productions in many of Europe's leading opera houses, Mr. Valdés made his highly successful opera debut in France with La Traviata at the Nice Opera. Since then, he has conducted productions in Paris, Lausanne, Rome, Berlin, London, Barcelona, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bonn, Asturias, and Santiago, Chile. Mr. Valdés made his American operatic debut in May 1992 with the Seattle Opera conducting Cosi fan tutti and returned there in the fall of 1998 to lead Gounod's Faust. Recent and upcoming opera appearances include Katya Kabanova and Samson and Delilah in Oviedo, Spain; La Traviata, Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Madame Butterfly in San Juan; Lakme, Damnation of Faust, Rigoletto and Rosenkavalier at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile; and Don Carlo in Madrid.
Maximiano Valdés has recorded with London’s Royal Philharmonic, the Monte Carlo and Nice Philharmonics, and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and had an exclusive agreement with Naxos to record works by Latin American and Spanish composers with his orchestra in Asturias. His most recent recording is a CD of works by Roberto Sierra with the Puerto Rico Symphony, also for Naxos.
Rafael Enrique Irizarry, Associate Conductor
Rafael Enrique Irizarry
A finalist in the 1995 Leonard Bernstein Orchestral Conducting competition at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts, Rafael Enrique Irizarry was engaged in 2015 as Associate Conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, designated by Music Director Maximiano Valdés. For 32 years he was an instrumentalist of this orchestra, initially appearing as guest conductor from 1995 onwards. Tenured faculty and ensembles conductor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, he also served for 14 years as instructor of the world-renowned San Juan Children’s Choir.
As a conductor Maestro Irizarry has paired with Puerto Rico’s main artistic organizations leading widely acclaimed events that shifted the trajectory and perception of orchestral and symphonic music in the island. The first music-to-film concerts seen in Puerto Rico for over 2 decades were led by Maestro Irizarry. Notable amongst these were an evening of productions scored by Nino Rota, three sold-out performances of a Disney-studios-licensed Disney in Concert show and three other sold-out music-to-film events with the Pixar in Concert international roadshow, performed by the Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra. Maestro Irizarry was later invited by the Puerto Rico Philharmonic to prepare the orchestra and be cover conductor for an unprecedented music-to-film performance in San Juan of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to be led by Maestro Jeffrey Schindler. Maestro Irizarry designed and conducted what became the most successful event in the history of orchestral in Puerto Rico: nine sold-out performances of a Star Wars tribute that honored the return of the franchise to theaters with Star Wars Episode VII. Over 10,000 spectators attended those now historic concerts played by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Irizarry has also appeared as guest conductor of various other professional ensembles, both civilian and military, in the Americas and Europe.
Upon completion of his early schooling in Puerto Rico, Maestro Irizarry obtained professional titles with distinctions at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and the School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. Later, the Organization of American States offered him a three-year stipend to study conducting in Venezuela at the very outset of the El Sistema orchestral program in that country.
Since 1989, Maestro Irizarry has been a participant, first as instrumentalist and later as conductor, in various professional training programs. Beginning in 2017, he has been a participant in the highly esteemed program Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive in its editions in United States, Europe and Mexico. While there he collaborated with founder Ángel Vélez and pre-eminent faculty members William Ross and Conrad Pope.
Maestro Irizarry is writer and host of Banda Sonora (Soundtrack), a film-scoring-oriented educational broadcast on Puerto Rico’s public radio service, WIPR Allegro 91.3 FM.
Roselín Pabón, Emeritus conductor
ROSELIN PABÓN
Emeritus conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony since 2013, maestro Roselín Pabón also conducts the Orchestra of the Conservatory of Music in San Juan. In 2018 he celebrated his 60th anniversary in music and his 40 years since he first conducted the Symphony.
Maestro Pabón was the first Puerto Rican to conduct the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (1978). Through more than three decades, Pabón has been an essential part of its development, first as an assistant conductor and then as an associate musical director.
Among his commitments, a concert with the cuatrista Luis Sanz in the Museo del Barrio in New York stands out. The program included the premiere of the Concerto for Four and Iván Rodríguez's orchestra, commissioned by the Música de Cámara Inc. organization, of which Pabón is principal guest conductor. For his performance of program from the Americas with this orchestra, the New York Music critic Byron Mark Sean wrote: “Here is a Maestro who fully understands rhythm, so rhythm never becomes a distraction. [...] Maintaining coherence throughout a program of difficult and little-known works is a real feat.” Locally, the critic for the newspaper El Nuevo Día, Luis Enrique Juliá, has commented on his performances in terms such as: "another memorable night on the podium" and "the maestro Pabón and his instrumentalists achieved an explosion of orchestral colors."
As a guest conductor in Spain, Italy, the Americas, and the Caribbean, he has distinguished himself for his interpretation of the international repertoire and of Puerto Rican composers. Between 2011 and 2013, he conducted the reconstruction of Rafael Hernández's Cofresí operetta, together with the Puerto Rico Symphony. This project culminated in a Grammy Award nomination.
Pabón has been recognized with an honorary doctorate from the Inter-American University, the UNESCO medal, the Coquí de Oro and the Mangó de Oro, the latter awarded by his hometown, Mayagüez, PR.