The American Youth Symphony, in Los Angeles, has announced the appointment of CARLOS IZCARAY as music director and JUAN FELIPE MOLANO as resident conductor. Both appointments take effect at the start of the 2016-17 season.
Carlos Izcaray, a native of Venezuela, recently completed his first season as music director of the Birmingham-based Alabama Symphony Orchestra. A two-time winner of the Toscanini International Conducting Competition, he has guest conducted extensively in the U.S. and Europe and has worked with such educational institutions as Venezuela’s El Sistema, the U.K.’s Cambridge University Music Society and London Schools Symphony Orchestra, and the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen (Mich.) Center for the Arts. Izcaray played cello in El Sistema orchestras as a youth and later studied at Interlochen Arts Academy, the New World School of the Arts (Miami, Fla.), Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen.
Juan Felipe Molano has served as conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA) since 2014. He had previously held that post with the Colombian Youth Philharmonic and the Batuta Colombian System of Youth Orchestras, and was music director of Mexico’s Yucatan Symphony Orchestra for five years. As a guest conductor Molano has led the LA Phil, the Virginia-based Youth Orchestra of the Americas, and numerous professional orchestras in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. For fifteen years he has taught at universities in Colombia, Mexico, and the U.S.
Posted June 3, 2016
