Assistant conductor for Miami Symphony

Here is a website about the current assistant conductor of the Miami Symphony. This is a joint program with the Frost School of Music. No info about how to apply for the program.

For nearly two decades, the Miami Symphony Orchestra and the University of Miami Frost School of Music have worked together to offer quality concerts to the South Florida community. The Frost School of Music at UM has hosted the Miami Symphony Orchestra for exciting concert seasons featuring renowned international artists and outstanding repertoire. The Frost School of Music performing venues have proven ideal for the Miami Symphony Orchestra to perform and to provide better quality of life to the Miami-Dade County audiences.

Dean Berg of the Frost School of Music and Eduardo Marturet
create the Assistant Conductor Program partnership

The Frost School of Music and the Miami Symphony Orchestra have created an Assistant Conductor Program which will facilitate the selection of a UM Teaching Assistant whose duties will include apprenticeship with the Miami Symphony Orchestra. The Music Director of the Miami Symphony Orchestra will select the candidate from the group of graduate students that UM offers. Each Assistant Conductor will hold the position for two years, and it will be renewed on an ongoing basis.

Some of the opportunities for the student include having the opportunity to conduct the orchestra in rehearsals and concerts; active technical coaching by the Music Director; receive a paid stipend by the Miami Symphony Orchestra that will contribute to cover expenses of transportation, music scores, and others; devote roughly half of his UM Teaching Assistant load to the Assistant Conductor position.

“We are very excited about the partnership between the Miami Symphony and the Frost School,” said Dean Shelton Berg of the Frost School. “This relationship allows a brilliant Frost doctoral student to collaborate and ’share the podium’ with the MSO’s esteemed conductor, Eduardo Marturet.”

Cristian Grases, Assistant conductor as part of the Frost School of Music and MSO Apprentice Program

As assistant conductor of the Miami Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of Maestro Eduardo Marturet and the Conductor of the Young Musician’s Orchestra in Miami, Cristian Grases is fast becoming one of Miami’s most sought after young artists. Born in Caracas in 1973 and beginning his musical studies at the age of 11, he started his musical education at the music school “Juan José Landaeta”, where he studied music theory, harmony, counterpoint, music history, and the piano. His musical life started as a chorister and instrumentalist in 1989, hence as composer, assistant conductor and conductor of choral and instrumental ensembles until today. He studied composition, music arrangement, choral and orchestra conduction with national and international music masters. Cristian Grases attended two “Bach-academy” workshops under Helmuth Rilling in Venezuela and, with the help of a scholarship, he was invited by Rilling to study Choral and Orchestral Conducting at the “Sommerakademie” of Stutgart, Germany, in 1998.

In 1995 he founded “Cíncopah”, a 5 male vocal ensemble that is dedicated to the creation of new music, based on vocal and jazz musical aspects. He stayed with the ensemble until 2002. From 1996 to 2002 he was incorporated within the team working on the project “Pequeños Cantores de la Schola” as the conductor of the Second Level as well as Cantoría Juvenil. The same year he won a very prestigious Venezuelan Art award: the “Orden José Felix Ribas” for artistic merit. He also won the first and second prize in a choral arrangement competition “Estilo Caribeño”.

Cristian has been involved in many international concert tours with his former youth choir Cantoría Juvenil of the Caracas Schola Cantorum (Venezuela), and with the Iowa Youth Chorus (USA), earning international prestige and recognition. He has served as honourable guest conductor in concerts and workshops nationally and internationally. He grew to mastering the choral activities coordination of the Youth Orchestra Foundation of Caracas, under the management of Jose Antonio Abreu. He also taught choral conducting, history and general music to the post graduates of the Simon Bolivar University of Caracas, the Central Washington University in Washington State, and the University of Miami in Florida, USA. In October 2003, he was nominated to be one of the 16 participants in the Swedish competition for young conductors “Eric Ericson Award”. In 2004, he was selected by the IFCM (International Federation for Choral Music) as one of the 5-member committee for the Songbridge Project, together with renowned choral masters and chaired by the creator of the project: Erkki Pohjola (Finland).

Grases has taken part in numerous festivals, workshops and events as a guest conductor, jury member and conducting pedagogue in North and South America, Europe and Asia. During the summer of 2008, Grases conducted workshops and sessions as guest conductor in France (Europa Cantat Jr.) and Denmark (World Symposium on Choral Music), and has been commissioned to compose for ensembles in the San Francisco area. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Amazonia Vocal Ensemble, which is based in Miami and focuses on Latin American repertoire as well as the current conductor for the Women’s Chamber Ensemble at the University of Miami.