Two new staff conductors will join the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this September: François López-Ferrer and Wilbur Lin.
The former will be named as the new assistant conductor for the CSO and the May Festival and the latter will assume the position of assistant conductor for the Cincinnati Pops and the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra Philharmonic. They succeed Keitaro Harada and Gene Chang, whose tenures will be completed this season.
López-Ferrer, a Spanish-American conductor, has family ties to the CSO; his father, the late Jesús López-Cobos, served as CSO's music director from 1986 to 2001 and as music director emeritus until he died in 2018. Having had grown up here, López-Ferrer attended the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and obtained a bachelor's degree of music in composition. (He also has a master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting from the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne.)
Currently, he is in his second season as an associate conductor at the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Chile (The National Symphony Orchestra of Chile), where he also serves as the principal conductor of the Ballet Nacional Chileno.
His new position at the CSO will see him work alongside and provide support to CSO Music Director Louis Langrée and May Festival Principal Conductor Juanjo Mena.
Lin, a Taiwanese-American conductor, began his music education at the age of 5 and went on to found the Chamber Philharmonic Taipei in 2008, which is now recognized as a professional chamber orchestra in Taiwan.
He has held positions at several institutions, including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Taiwan Symphony orchestras. He has conducted work on stages across the world — from the National Concert Hall of Taipei to London's Southbank Centre and Manchester’s BBC MediaCityUK studios and more.
Last month, the CSO also announced the five string players selected as part of their diversity fellowship program — with the goal of providing new opportunities to underrepresented musicians — who will officially come on board for the two-year stint this August. Those fellows include Magdiell Antequera, Jordan Curry, Cristian J. Diaz, Michael Martin and Denielle Wilson.
For more info, visit cincinnatisymphony.org
