The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has appointed two staff conductors: FRANÇOIS LÓPEZ-FERRER as assistant conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival, and WILBUR LIN as assistant conductor for the Cincinnati Pops and conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra Philharmonic. They succeed Keitaro Harada and Gene Chang, whose tenures conclude this season.
François López-Ferrer will assist CSO Music Director Louis Langrée and May Festival Principal Conductor Juanjo Mena for all rehearsals and performances, and will conduct the CSO Young Peoples Concerts. López-Ferrer’s father, the late Jesús López-Cobos, was music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 2001 and music director emeritus until his death in 2018. López-Ferrer grew up in Cincinnati, attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), and maintains ties to the local music community. He founded Ensemble Vita, composed of fellow students from CCM, and led concerts in the Cincinnati area with programming that spanned from Baroque through 21st-century repertoire. In 2012 he co-founded Cincinnati’s Queen City Chamber Opera, presenting rarely performed operas in non-traditional spaces. López-Ferrer led Switzerland’s Verbier Festival Orchestra in 2018, and is currently in his second season as associate conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Chile. He also serves as principal conductor of the Ballet Nacional Chileno. López-Ferrer holds a master’s degree in conducting from the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne and a bachelor of music in composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Wilbur Lin will serve as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra and as conductor and artistic leader of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra Philharmonic. In 2008, he founded a student orchestra, the Chamber Philharmonic Taipei, which is now a professional ensemble with an annual summer season. He has held assistant conductor positions at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Taiwan Symphony, and he has conducted the Manchester Camerata, MAV Symphony Orchestra (Budapest), Taipei Philharmonic, Taiwan Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquestra de Cadaqués (Spain), Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Guiyang Symphony (China), Missouri Symphony, and Windsor Symphony (Canada). As a pianist, Lin coached and performed with the Indianapolis Opera, IU Opera Theater, and Reimagining Opera for Kids. Lin is a graduate of Riccardo Muti’s Italian Opera Academy, and had led Macbeth at Teatro Alighieri (Ravenna, Italy) and Die Zauberflöte with the Winter Harbor Festival & Opera (Maine). Lin was a Rhodes Scholar from 2013 to 2014, is two-time recipient of Mortimer Furber Prize for Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music, and is a doctoral candidate at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.
Posted July 17, 2019
