April, 2006
The La Jolla Symphony Announces Finalists for Music Director
La Jolla, Calif. (April, 2006) - Each of the following finalists will lead a subscription program over the next year, and the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus Association hopes to announce its new Music Director in March 2007.
A member of the Music Director Search Committee, comments "We are thrilled with the quality of the conductors identified through our search process. Each candidate demonstrated superb musical artistry conducting our orchestra, and we are looking forward to working with them in depth to present next season's concerts. We are looking forward to our audience meeting the candidates and, with us, learning more about them and their vision for our ensembles. We are confident that we will end up with a Music Director who will continue our tradition of presenting professional-caliber performances of traditional and ground-breaking orchestral and choral music."
David Aks
David Aks received his Master of Music degree in orchestral conducting at Oberlin College where he also earned a Bachelor of Music degree in cello performance. Additionally he studied at the Minnesota Opera Institute, the Conductors Guild Summer Institute, The Academia Chigiana in Sienna, Italy, and the Tanglewood Conducting Program with Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, Colin Davis, Andre Previn and Gustav Meier. He is currently serving on the faculty of California State University, Northridge where he has been Music Director of the CSUN Symphony, and he is currently Artistic Director of the CSUN Opera Theater and Instructor of Cello.
Mr. Aks' guest conducting appearances have include the American Youth Symphony, The Fresno Philharmonic, The Black Sea Philharmonic (Romania), The Nashville Symphony and The Antelope Valley Symphony. In addition, he has conducted the orchestras of Bogota, Medellin and Cali in Colombia, S.A. Mr. Aks also served as Assistant Conductor to Seiji Ozawa for Tosca with the Boston Symphony. As cellist, Aks has played with the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, American Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, American Ballet Theater and has toured Europe, Russia and the U.S. with the New York Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra.
Aks has guest conducted the All-State Honor Orchestras of Kentucky and California as well as the CODA (California Orchestra Directors Association) Honor Orchestra. He has served on the faculty of OperaWorks Summer Intensive Program, the Altenburger Musiktheater Akademie in Germany and the ASTA Summer Institute of Chamber Music. He is a past president of The American String Teachers Association (ASTA) Greater Los Angeles Chapter. He has previously taught at the University of South Florida and the College of St. Catherine.
David Handel
American conductor David Handel has developed an extraordinary reputation as one of the most respected and innovative conductors in Latin America. His imaginative programming and distinctive community approach have brought record numbers of Bolivians to National Symphony concerts. Since the beginning of his tenure in Bolivia, audience attendance has grown twelve-fold, most of the new audience composed of young concert-goers. Handel's energy and critical acclaim has made him one of the busiest conductors in Latin America and has led to his numerous invitations as guest conductor with many of the most important orchestras of the region.
First noticed by Kurt Masur, then Music Director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, David Handel was invited to serve as his apprentice conductor at this historic institution. Since then, he has led orchestras throughout the world, including programs for international radio and television broadcast. In 1993, David Handel was one of a few young conductors selected to conduct the New York Philharmonic in a preview of young conductors at Carnegie Hall. As a guest conductor, David Handel has performed widely in the United States, Europe, Asia and in Latin America. Maestro Handel has led numerous first performances and world premiers and has to his credit a considerable list of television and compact disc recordings.
Twice a fellow of the prestigious Fulbright Program, David Handel is a laureate of the Chicago Artists International Program and has received numerous awards including two Rackham awards, the Marguerite Lapp Scholarship for Exceptional Musical Talent, two Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Illinois Arts Council awards, the Decoration of Illimani for outstanding community service in the arts (Bolivia), the UNESCO / Pro-Santa Cruz National Prize in Culture (Bolivia) and a fellowship from the Leipzig Gewandhaus (Germany). He has represented the United States in Latin America and Central Asia as a recipient of United States Information Agency awards and as a Cultural Ambassador through the United States State Department Cultural Specialist Program.
Sharon Lavery
Sharon Lavery serves on the faculty at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music as Professor of Conducting and Resident Conductor of the Thornton Symphony, Chamber Orchestra and Wind Ensemble. As Resident Conductor, a position created especially for her, Ms. Lavery has collaborated with world renowned guest conductors who have visited Thornton, including Carl St. Clair, Sergiu Comissiona, Jorge Mester, Stanislaw Skrowacewski, H. Robert Reynolds and John Williams. She has concertized with the Thornton ensembles on many occasions, and for seven years led the Thornton Concert Orchestra as Music Director.
A native of Ossining, New York, Ms. Lavery holds a bachelor of music education degree from Michigan State University, a master of music in clarinet performance from the New England Conservatory of Music and a master of music in orchestral conducting from the University of Southern California where she was the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Memorial Scholarship for two consecutive years.
Ms. Lavery has conducted in many concert halls across the United States, including Carnegie Hall in New York City. She currently holds the position of Cover Conductor for the Pacific Symphony Orchestra of Orange County, and has served as Associate Conductor of the Herbert Zipper Orchestra of Los Angeles and as music director of the MUSE International Music Day festival in Chiba, Japan.
Karla Lemon
Karla Lemon has conducted performances and recordings throughout the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy, Germany and China. She was recently named Resident Conductor of the Henry Mancini Institute bringer her into close association with the film industry and Hollywood artists and composers. In addition to the highly acclaimed performances of standard repertoire, Ms. Lemon’s name is associated with innovative programming and a philosophy of presenting works by living composers including Joan Tower, Phillip Glass, Chen Yi, Eric Moe, and Libby Larsen. In November 2003 Ms. Lemon conducted on the inaugural series entitled "Fresh Ink" sponsored by the Kimmel Center, in Philidelphia.
Ms. Lemon's guest conducting engagements include performances with the Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, Women's Philharmonic and Spokane Symphony. She has worked in collaboration with Bobby McFerrin and the Oberlin Dance Collective, the San Francisco Ballet, appeared as guest conductor with the Scotia Festival in Halifax, the "Works and Process Series" at the Guggenheim in New York and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Recent highlight performances have included collaborations with notable guest artists Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Christine Brandes, Fred Sherry, Maria Bachmann, Richard Todd, Phillip Glass, Hubert Laws and John Coigliano.
Ms. Lemon's discography includes recordings on Koch International, Albany, Innova, Vienna Modern Masters and Dorian Records.
Steven Schick
Steven Schick was born in Iowa and raised in a farming family. For the past thirty years he has championed contemporary percussion music as a performer and teacher. He studied at the University of Iowa and received the Soloists Diploma from the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany. Steven Schick has commissioned and premiered more than one hundred new works for percussion and has performed these pieces on major concert series such as Lincoln Center's Great Performers and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Green Umbrella concerts as well as in international festivals including Warsaw Autumn, the BBC Proms, the Jerusalem Festival, the Holland Festival, the Stockholm International Percussion Event and the Budapest Spring Festival among many others. He has recorded many of those works for SONY Classical,Wergo, Point, CRI, Neuma and Cantaloupe Records. He has been regular guest lecturer at the Rotterdam Conservatory, and the Royal College of Music in London.
Schick is Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego and Lecturer in Percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. Schick was the percussionist of the Bang on a Can All-Stars of New York City from 1992-2002. From 2000 to 2004, he served as Artistic Director of the Centre International de Percussion de Genève in Geneva, Switzerland. Steven Schick is the founder and Artistic Director of the percussion group, "red fish blue fish."
In 2006, Schick will release three important publications. His book on solo percussion music, "The Percussionist’s Art: Same Bed, Different Dreams," will be published by the University of Rochester Press; his recording of "The Mathematics of Resonant Bodies" by John Luther Adams will be released by Cantaloupe Music; and a DVD release in collaboration with the percussion group, "red fish blue fish," of the complete percussion music of Iannis Xenakis will be released by Mode Records in October.
