Baltimore, MD (PRWEB) October 01, 2013
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and the Peabody Conservatory announced today that BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellow Alexandra Arrieche will extend her appointment through the 2013-2014 season. Ms. Arrieche began her Fellowship at the start of the 2012-2013 season, receiving a full tuition scholarship to complete a one-year artist diploma program at the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University. Now that Ms. Arrieche has completed her degree, the fellowship has been restructured to include a larger level of commitment to conducting at the BSO.
Notably, Ms. Arrieche will lead the BSO in a program of Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky at the Weinberg Center for the Performing Arts in Frederick, Md. on Saturday, October 5th at 8 p.m. She will also conduct the Overture from Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall on Thursday, February 27th at 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 2nd at 3 p.m. BSO Music Director Marin Alsop will continue to provide personal instruction and guidance to Ms. Arrieche.
Established in 2007, the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship is a partnership between Marin Alsop and Gustav Meier, director of the graduate conducting program at the Peabody Conservatory, to assist exceptional young conductors with their careers.
About Alexandra Arrieche, conductor
The winner of Marin Alsop’s Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship in 2011, Brazilian-born conductor Alexandra Arrieche has showcased her talents on an international level. Showing promise in her early studies as a pianist and vocalist, Arrieche was invited as a teenager to study composition with renowned Spanish composer Cristobal Halffter. After studying composition, her first conducting teacher was Roberto Tibiriçá, with whom she studied for three years in São Paulo. She has also participated in master classes with Kurt Masur, Fabio Mechetti, Johannes Schlaefli, Hugh Wolf, Robert Spano and Cliff Colnot. In 2009, Maestro Fabio Mechetti cited Arrieche as “one of the best Brazilian conductors of the new generation.”
In 2007, Ms. Arrieche won the University of São Paulo Orchestra conducting competition and became the assistant conductor of one of Brazil’s finest orchestras, a position that she held until 2010 when she came to the United States. She has conducted the North Czech Philharmonic Teplice, the Minas Gerais Philharmonic, the Londrina Symphony Orchestra, the Brazilian Youth Symphony and the São Paulo Orchestra. In addition to these groups, she has also worked with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony, the Bard Conservatory Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.
Motivated by the lack of opportunities for young Brazilian conductors to work with native orchestras, Ms. Arrieche planned and organized a series of workshops for Brazilian conductors in 2009. In 2010, she was offered a place in Maestro Harold Farberman’s conducting master class and a scholarship to Bard College.
In 2011, Arrieche won the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship founded by Marin Alsop. Maestra Alsop established the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship in 2002 with the mission “to promote, present, and encourage talented women conductors at the beginning of their professional careers.” Ms. Arrieche also earned the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship for the 2012-2013 season, which was recently extended through the 2013-2014 season. As a result, she has the continued opportunity to work with Maestra Alsop both in Baltimore and São Paulo.
About the BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship Program
Beginning in the 2007-2008 season, the BSO with Music Director Marin Alsop and the Peabody Conservatory with Gustav Meier, in partnership with the League of American Orchestras, launched its Conducting Fellows Program, a collaborative endeavor modeled after the League’s American Conducting Fellows Program, established in 2002. This marked the first partnership of its kind in the country between a conservatory and a symphony orchestra. The Baltimore partnership was developed as a unique one-year program designed to provide exceptionally talented conductors in the early stages of their careers an opportunity to hone their skills before assuming a role with a professional orchestra. In conjunction with the initial partnership team, the BSO and the Peabody Conservatory, the League played an important guiding role in helping the two institutions develop a comprehensive program agenda and curriculum, and also assisted with evaluations of the program during the pilot period. Benefits of the conducting fellowship include continuous on-site training with the BSO and academic studies at Peabody and Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Gustav Meier, head of the conducting faculty at Peabody, serves as the fellowship’s primary academic instructor. At the end of each one-year program, BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellows receive a post-graduate Artist’s Diploma in Conducting from the Peabody Conservatory. In addition to Ms. Arrieche, previous BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellows have been Joseph Young, Ilyich Rivas and Lee Mills.
About the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
The Grammy Award-winning Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is internationally recognized as having achieved a preeminent place among the world’s most important orchestras. Acclaimed for its enduring pursuit of artistic excellence, the BSO has attracted a devoted national and international following while maintaining deep bonds throughout Maryland with innovative education and community outreach initiatives.
The BSO made musical history in September 2007, when Maestra Marin Alsop led her inaugural concerts as the Orchestra’s 12th music director, making her the first woman to head a major American orchestra. With her highly praised artistic vision, her dynamic musicianship and her commitment to accessibility in classical music, Maestra Alsop’s leadership has ushered in a new era for the BSO and its audiences.
Under Music Director Marin Alsop’s leadership, the BSO has rapidly added several critically acclaimed albums to its already impressive discography. The BSO recently released Dvořák’s Symphonies Nos. 6, 7 and 8, the final two discs in its three-disc Dvořák cycle. In August 2009, the BSO and Marin Alsop released Bernstein’s Mass featuring baritone Jubilant Sykes, the Morgan State University Choir and the Peabody Children’s Chorus. The album rose to number six on the Classical Billboard Charts and received a 2009 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Album. The Orchestra made its foray into online distribution in April 2007 with the release of a live-concert recording of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on iTunes, which quickly became the site’s number one classical music download.
In addition to the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where the orchestra has performed for 28 years, the BSO is a founding partner and the resident orchestra at the new state-of-the-art Music Center at Strathmore, just outside Washington, D.C. With the opening of Strathmore in February 2005, the BSO became the nation’s only major orchestra with year-round venues in two metropolitan areas.
About the Peabody Institute
Located in the heart of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Cultural District, the Peabody Institute was founded in 1857 as America’s first academy of music by philanthropist George Peabody. Today, Peabody boasts a preeminent faculty, a nurturing, collaborative learning environment and the academic resources of one of the nation’s leading universities, Johns Hopkins. Through its degree-granting Conservatory and its community-based Preparatory music and dance school, Peabody trains musicians and dancers of every age and at every level, from small children to seasoned professionals, from dedicated amateurs to winners of international competitions. Each year, Peabody stages nearly 100 major concerts and performances, ranging from classical to contemporary to jazz, many of them free — a testament to the vision of George Peabody.
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