WE ARE COMMITTED

TO PROMOTE THE DEVELOPMENT AND ENRICHMENT OF MUSIC AND SCENIC-MUSICAL ART IN PUERTO RICO

 

Twice nominated for the LATIN GRAMMY®, the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, has been distinguished, since its inception, by having musicians of the highest caliber, who have excelled both locally and internationally. Throughout each season, the OSPR has welcomed internationally recognized guest soloists such as Ana María Martínez, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te kanawa, Alicia Larocha, among others.

 The current music director of the OSPR is the respected Chilean Conductor, Maximiano Valdés. Rafael Enrique Irizarry is the associate conductor and Roselín Pabón, the emeritus conductor. The rigorous training of its members, the balance between youth and experience, and the fluidity between the classical musical genre, the lyrical theater, and popular music, have positioned the Symphony Orchestra as the most important symphonic influence in Central America and the Caribbean.

 
 
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Meet our first-class ORCHESTRA
with the most talented musicians in the country.

 
 

MUSICIANS

MAXIMIANO VALDÉS,
MUSIC director

Rafael E. Irizarry, associate conductor

Roselín Pabón, emeritus conductor

 

FIRST VIOLINS

Omar Velázquez, concertmaster

Francisco Jiménez, assistant

Francisco Cabán

David E. Betancourt

José E. Vanga

Aida E. Sosa

Joseam A. Cuadrado

John Dederick

Fermín Segarra Cordero

Alexis P. Velázquez

Boinael Oms Santos
 

SECOND VIOLINS

Inoel Jirau, principal

Walter Alberghini, assistant

Enid Collado

Pedro A. Emmanuelli

Emma I. Matos

Alexis R. Sánchez

Isabel Laboy

Verónica Quevedo, substitute

Víctor E. Már6r, substitute

Sandra Burgos, substitute

VIOLAS

Fernando Vela, principal sustituto

María D. Santiago

Yeisa G. Alejandro

Edgardo A. Rosaly

Jean Carlos Faría

José Javier Matos

Mirna Monclova, substitute

CELLOS

Luis M. Rojas, principal

Maricarmen Vélez, assistant

Harry Almodóvar

José D. de Jesús

Félix Guadalupe

Gabriel Acevedo

Fermín Segarra

Solimar Soto

Brenda Tirado

DOUBLE BASSES

José A. García, principal

Andrés Almodóvar, assistant

Antonio A. Frontera

Mari Carmen Rivera

David Von-Hack

Rafael Zayas

FLUTES

Josué Casillas, principal

Jonathan Figueroa, assistant

PICCOLO

Ana M. Hernández

OBOES

Ivonne M. Pérez, principal

Natalie G. Lorch, assistant

Cristian Gautier, substitute assistant

Gloria Navarro, corno inglés

CLARINETS

Andrés D. Maldonado, principal

George R. Morales, assistant

Emmanuel Díaz

BASSOONS

Adam A. Havrilla, principal

Ion Serbanescu, assistant

Pedro F. Vázquez

FRENCH HORNS

Benito Díaz, principal

Anthony S. Calderón, substitute assistant

José Antonio Colón

Joshua Pantoja

Raimundo Díaz

TRUMPETS

Felipe Rodríguez, principal

Luis A. Bermúdez, assistant

Rafael Parrilla

 

TROMBONES

Jerry Rivas, principal

Miguel Rivera, assistant

Ramón L. Serra, bass trombone

TUBA

Gabriel A. Báez

PERCUSSION

Miguel J. Rivera, assistant

Carlos J. Ávila, assistant

Gabriel Plácido

Guillermo Andrés Mejia Wright, substitute

HARP

Elisa Torres, principal

 
 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

 

Manuel Cardona Martínez
Acting President

Eric Villegas
Secretary

Carlos Rubio Cancela
Member

Marta Casals Istomín
Member

Frances M. Vallejo Rosich
Miembro

Alexander Feliciano Emanuelli
Miembro

José Juan Tañón
Miembro

Melissa M. Santana
Directora Ejecutiva

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

STAFF

 

Yabetza Vivas Irizarry
Orchestra Manager

Carlos J. Guzmán
Personnel Manager

Myriam Cruz
Labor Relations Officer

John D. Márquez
Orchestra Librarian

Indhira Lima
Orchestra Librarian assistant

Susan Atanacio
Administrative Officer

Julio Peña
Director of Educational Programs

Ana M. Soto Ortiz
Assistant Manager CAEM & Casals Festival

Maximiano Valdés, director titular

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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

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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

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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.