Concert Program
DVOŘÁK | Carnival Overture
WYNTON MARSALIS | Violin Concerto
ELGAR | Enigma Variations
Andres Lopera, conductor
Kelly Hall-Tompkins, violin
Click this link to view the full program for Opening Weekend: https://issuu.com/elginsymphonyorchestra/docs/opening_weekend_program
Ticket Information
Prices: Gold $65 / Red $40 / Green $20
Students tickets $10
Youth 17 and under free with accompanying adult
Biographies
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Exciting, creative, engaging and motivating are some of the words that describe Maestro Andres Lopera. He is one of the current leading Latin American conductors in the United States and has performed with orchestras throughout the Americas for over a decade.
Lopera is in his 3rd season as Associate Conductor of the Columbus Symphony and Music Director of the Columbus Youth Symphony Orchestra. He has directed performances with orchestras such as the Colorado Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Toledo Symphony, New World Symphony and Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra.
Andres Lopera has also appeared at summer festivals, He conducted of the Inaugural season of the New England Conservatory’s Summer Orchestra Institute in 2019. Other engagements have include, the National Repertory Orchestra and the Youth Orchestra of the Americas among others. In October 2017, Lopera covered a series of concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic working alongside with Gustavo Dudamel and Carlos Miguel Prieto.
At the international level, he has performed with the Xalapa Symphony Orchestra and the EAFIT Symphony Orchestra in his home country Colombia, among others. He has also presented concerts and collaborated with both professional and youth orchestras throughout Central and South America, including organizations in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Honduras. In June 2012, Lopera was appointed Music Director of the Metropolitan Youth Symphony in Portland, OR, where he oversaw a program with more than 450 students, 12 ensembles, and 10 conducting staff. In recognition of his contributions to Portland, he received the Portland Monthly Award, Rising Star Award, and the Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber Bravo Award. Additional honors include the Orgullo Colombiano Award and Egresados Que Inspiran from EAFIT University, both received in 2017.
Lopera has studied and worked with some of the most outstanding professional artists in the field, including Hugh Wolff, Andrew Litton, David Loebel, Carlos Kalmar, Ludovic Morlot and Marin Alsop. He earned a Master degree in orchestral conducting from New England Conservatory.
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Winner of a Naumburg International Violin Competition Honorarium Prize and featured in the Smithsonian Museum for African-American History, Ms. Hall-Tompkins is a violin soloist entrepreneur who has been acclaimed by the New York Times as “the versatile violinist who makes the music come alive,” for her “tonal mastery” (BBC Music Magazine) and as New York Times “New Yorker of the Year.” She has appeared as co-soloist in Carnegie Hall with Glenn Dicterow and conductor Leonard Slatkin, in London at Queen Elizabeth Hall, at Lincoln Center and with the Symphonies of Baltimore, Dallas, Jacksonville, Oakland, recitals in Paris, New York, Toronto, Washington, Chicago, and festivals of Tanglewood, Ravinia, Santa Fe, France, Germany and Italy. She was “Fiddler”/Violin Soloist of the Grammy/Tony-nominated Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. Inspired by her experience, she commissioned and developed the first ever Fiddler solo disc of all new arrangements, “The Fiddler Expanding Tradition,” which is featured in the upcoming new documentary “Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles” on the 55-year history of the musical.
Actively performing virtually throughout the pandemic, numerous projects include premiering 4 pieces written for her, creating and/or been invited to participate in unique collaborations including with Tony-nominated actor Daniel Watts, aerial dancer Alexandra Peter, Frisson Films, Gil Shaham’s Gilharmonic, Routledge press as contributing author for a new book on Music and Human Rights and with WQXR as part of the inaugural Artist Propulsion Lab.
As founder of Music Kitchen-Food for the Soul, Kelly Hall-Tompkins is a pioneer of social justice in classical music, bringing top artists in over 100 concerts in homeless shelters coast to coast from New York to Los Angeles, and in internationally in Paris, France. Music Kitchen commissioned and will present the World Premiere of the Forgotten Voices Song Cycle in Association with Carnegie Hall.