Donato Cabrera Conducts the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra on November 18, 2023
Photo by Stefan Cohen available in high resolution at www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/donato-cabrera
Donato Cabrera Guest Conducts the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra
Saturday November 18, 2023 at 8pm
Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts
300 N. Elm Street | Greensboro, NC
Tickets and information: www.greensborosymphony.org/event/donato-cabrera-maestro-candidate-2/
“Donato Cabrera naturally embraces both his musicians and his audiences as if they’re part of a multigenerational extended family”
– San Francisco Classical Voice
www.greensborosymphony.org | www.donatocabrera.com
Greensboro, NC – Conductor Donato Cabrera will conduct the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra (GSO) as a Music Director finalist in an upcoming concert on Saturday, November 18, 2023 at 8pm at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts (300 N. Elm Street).
For this special performance, Cabrera conducts the GSO in a concert program featuring Short Ride in a Fast Machine by John Adams, Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major. Soprano Maria Valdes will join Cabrera and the GSO as a featured vocalist in the GSO’s performances of Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4.
“I’m very excited about the music I’ve chosen for my concert with the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, as well as being able to introduce the wonderful soprano, Maria Valdes, to the Greensboro community,” says Cabrera. “These three pieces by John Adams, Samuel Barber, and Gustav Mahler deal with memories that are formed during one’s youth. Indeed, with Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, the entire symphony is meant to be heard as if through children’s ears! In hearing these works by three completely different composers performed together, we will not only have the opportunity to experience the impact these memories had in the creation of these pieces, but will give us the opportunity to reflect upon the memories and experiences that continue to shape our lives.”
“I am eagerly looking forward to sharing the stage again with Maestro Cabrera, reprising two works which we performed together several years ago,” says Valdes. “Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 was the first piece I ever performed with orchestra at the age of 19, so it is incredibly dear to my heart. And there is absolutely nothing that compares to being part of a Mahler Symphony. I can't wait to join Donato and the Greensboro Symphony to share such beautiful pieces once again!”
Mexican-American conductor Donato Cabrera is the Artistic and Music Director of the California Symphony and the Music Director of the Las Vegas Philharmonic. He served as the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra from 2009-2016. Cabrera is one of only a handful of conductors in history who has conducted performances with the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and the San Francisco Ballet. He is dedicated to adventurous programming, a leading advocate for living composers and digital innovation, and is keenly focused on outreach, engagement, and programming that reflects the communities he is serving. Cabrera co-founded the New York-based American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), which is dedicated to the outstanding performance of masterworks from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Cabrera has made debuts with the Chicago, London, National, and New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, Philharmonic Orchestra of the Staatstheater Cottbus, Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río, Orquesta Sinfónica Concepción, Hartford Symphony, Greensboro Symphony, Nevada Ballet Theatre, New West Symphony, Kalamazoo Symphony, Monterey Symphony, and the Reno Philharmonic. In his Carnegie Hall debut, Cabrera led the world premiere of Mark Grey’s Ătash Sorushan with soprano Jessica Rivera.
Deeply committed to diversity and education through the arts, Cabrera evaluates the scope, breadth, and content of the California Symphony’s music education programs, including its nationally recognized Sound Minds program and adult-education oriented Fresh Look: The Symphony Exposed weekly summer lecture series. As Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrera worked closely with its then Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, and frequently conducted the orchestra in a variety of concerts, including all of the education and family concerts, reaching over 70,000 children throughout the Bay Area every year.
Cabrera is equally at home in the world of opera, frequently conducting productions in the United States and abroad. He was the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Opera from 2005-2008 and has also been an assistant conductor for productions at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Ravinia Festival, Festival di Spoleto, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. Since 2008, he has frequently conducted productions in Concepción, Chile. In 2021 he made his debut with Opera San José and in spring 2023, Cabrera appeared with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music conducting Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul.
Awards and fellowships include a Herbert von Karajan Conducting Fellowship at the Salzburg Festival and conducting the Nashville Symphony in the League of American Orchestra’s prestigious Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. Cabrera was recognized by the Consulate-General of Mexico in San Francisco for his contributions to promoting and developing the presence of the Mexican community in the Bay Area.
About Maria Valdes: American soprano Maria Valdes was recently described as a "first-rate singing actress and a perfectly charming Gilda" (The New York Times). The upcoming 2023-2024 is filled with multitudes of thrilling symphonic and recital debuts. On the symphonic stage, Ms. Valdes joins the Greensboro Symphony to sing Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, is featured as the soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah with both the Atlanta Symphony and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and she returns to the Phoenix Symphony for Strauss’s Four Last Songs. In recital, she is featured with Il Cenacolo Italian Club, the Cathedral of St. Paul, the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, Spanish River Concerts, and OperAloha. Additionally, Ms. Valdes makes her return to Houston Grand Opera covering Maria in The Sound of Music.
Also an accomplished recitalist, Ms. Valdes has appeared in concert with Martin Katz, and made her New York recital debut with NYFOS performing with Steven Blier and Michael Barrett in Compositora, a recital of female Latin American composers. She also attended the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival which included several concert appearances and Ms. Valdes can be heard singing Mendelssohn’s “Hear my prayer” on the album Evening Hymn released by Gothic Records and acclaimed in the American Record Guide. An award-winner in the regional Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions, Ms. Valdes is also the winner of the top prize at the Corbett Opera Scholarship Competition at Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and is the recipient of a Shoshana Foundation Grant.
About the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra: The mission of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra (GSO) is to enrich the cultural life of Greensboro and surrounding areas through the development, promotion, and maintenance of a program of quality music and music education. Its primary vehicle for the conduct of these activities is the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, which presents concerts, special events, educational opportunities, and related activities.
Engaged in its 64th season, the GSO has a long history of support within the Triad community, bringing a diverse range of internationally renowned guest artists to perform in the new Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts. With one of the largest suites of music education programs in the southeast, the GSO serves approximately 50,000 students across four NC counties in a given season. To learn more about the GSO, visit greensborosymphony.org