AYPO Music director search finalists

AYPO Music Director Search

After 35 years with the National Symphony Orchestra and 25 years as Music Director of the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, Luis Haza announced that he will retire from AYPO at the end of June 2009 to begin the next phase of his life at his new residence in Georgia. (To see the full press release, please click here.)

With the help of Mr. Haza, AYPO began the extensive search for a new Music Director in September 2008. The process of searching for Mr. Haza’s successor has been a thrilling and enlightening process, with more than 95 applicants from throughout the United States and beyond. The Search Committee worked hard to narrow down the selection pool of candidates to those who were best qualified and suited to continue and build the musical excellence of the AYPO program. The following finalists were selected by the Search Committee and will conduct the first two AYP concerts of the 2009 – 2010 concert season. Mr. Haza will conduct the third AYP concert of the 2009 – 2010 season and the final concert will be conducted by the new Music Director. AYPO looks forward to an exciting year ahead of us!

Meet the Candidates:
Matthew Sidney Hazelwood
Daniel Spalding

Matthew Sidney Hazelwood

Matthew Sidney Hazelwood has established, over two decades of distinguished conducting in both the professional and educational fields, a unique reputation in the USA as well as overseas, for his individual professional skill, passionate advocacy for young musicians, and visionary arts leadership.

In June of 2008 Maestro Matthew Sidney Hazelwood was named Music Adviser and Principal Conductor of the Batuta National Youth Orchestra Program of Colombia (www.fundacionbatuta.com), an arts education program of the past 16 years, similar to the “El Sistema” in neighboring Venezuela. With Batuta, Mr. Hazelwood is responsible for working with the conducting and teaching staffs in one hundred music centers throughout Colombia, as well as providing overall artistic guidance to the many programs that serve more than 40,000 young student musicians.

During his fifteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Interlochen Arts Academy, Mr. Hazelwood developed a broad spectrum of engaging programs and a rigorous, nurturing educational philosophy towards working with talented young musicians as they prepare themselves for future careers in music. In this position, Mr. Hazelwood worked with many hundreds of students, many of whom are to be found in important positions throughout the musical world.

In addition to his work with youth orchestras, Maestro Hazelwood has devoted much of his career to the development of community orchestra ensembles, creating unique opportunities for local musicians of varied backgrounds the experience of professional music-making. He currently serves as Music Director of the Great Lakes Chamber Orchestra, a regional professional ensemble based in Northern Michigan, and has an ongoing position as Principal Guest Conductor for the Heart of England Orchestra based in Leicester, England. For his previous distinguished work over thirteen years as Music Director of the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra, Maestro Hazelwood recently was named Music Director Emeritus. Mr. Hazelwood has led major concerto performances with many distinguished artists including Misha Dichter, Sarah Chang, Russell Sherman, Jerome Lowenthal, Ida Kavafian, Leon Bates, Janos Starker, Miles Hoffman, Hilary Hahn, Orli Shaham, Eugene Fodor, Awadagin Pratt, Christopher Taylor, Ralph Votapek, Steve Doane and Dudley Moore.

A native of New York, Maestro Hazelwood completed his advanced musical studies at the Mannes College of Music where he studied percussion with Howard van Hyning (NYC Opera) and Walter Rosenberger (NY Philharmonic), conducting with Richard Westenburg, theory with Edward Aldwell and Carl Schachter, and piano with Emile Harris. In subsequent years, he has worked privately with Lukas Foss, Helmuth Rilling and with Enrico Pessina at the La Scala Opera house in Milan. Originally trained as a percussionist, Mr. Hazelwood is also an accomplished pianist and keeps several concertos in his repertoire as well as being an active chamber musician. Recent national radio appearances have included several broadcasts on NPR’s Performance Today.

Upon completion of his college studies in 1977, Mr. Hazelwood was invited to join the National Symphony of Colombia as timpanist, a position he held for nine seasons in addition to a variety of professional conducting activities. In 1980 he was named Chorus Master and Assistant Conductor of the National Opera of Colombia and in this capacity took an active part in over thirty different productions including such titles as Turandot, Fidelio, La Forza del destino, Cosi fan tutte, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cav.- Pag., Tosca, La Boheme, among many other operas of the standard repertoire. He has worked with such luminaries as Martina Arroyo, Juan Pons, Carlo Bergonzi, Thomas Hampson, Lili Chookasian and Marta Senn. While still based primarily in South America, Mr. Hazelwood conducted the National Opera of Costa Rica in productions of Norma, Il Trovatore, L’Italiana in Algeri as well as the National Symphony of Costa Rica in numerous concerts and tours.

Upon his return to residence in the United States, he was named associate Music Director of the Michigan State University Opera Theater, Music Director of the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra and subsequently, Conductor of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra. He established a widely recognized reputation for engaging and thoughtful pre-concert talks, energized rehearsals, and an unusual dedication to compelling programming as well as a passionate commitment to the music of our time through numerous commissions and premieres. He has been Music Director/Conductor of more than 25 different professional opera productions as well as more than 100 ballet performances.

Guest conducting engagements have included professional and university orchestras throughout Latin America, the US and in Asia; recently he led ten performances of the Korea premiere of Britten’s Albert Herring as well as the opening orchestral concert of the City of Seoul Orchestra Festival with the Puchon Philharmonic orchestra. (Both events at the prestigious Seoul Arts Center.

Daniel Spalding

Daniel Spalding brings to the podium a versatile and complex musical profile. With emphasis in percussion and composition, he earned B.M.E. and M.M. degrees from Northwestern University and held teaching positions at several universities, becoming nationally known for his work as a percussionist, composer, and pedagogue. Always interested in conducting, he continued his studies with Dr. Harry Begian at the University of Illinois, with Ferdinand Leitner in Austria at the Salzburg “Mozarteum,” in Romania with Mircea Cristescu of the Bucharest Philharmonic, and in Philadelphia with Max Rudolf. In 1985 he made his European debut with the Romanian State Philharmonic in Cluj-Napoca and was shortly afterwards appointed principal guest conductor, a post he held for seven years. He also appeared with most other state philharmonic orchestras throughout Romania, including a national broadcast on state television of the Mahler First Symphony with the Ploiesti Philharmonic. These many successes helped bring him to the attention of the eminent conductor Sergiu Comissiona, who invited him to be his assistant with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Spalding is a visionary and orchestra builder. As founder of the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra in 1991, he quickly secured international acclaim for his new orchestra. Over the years he won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEW Foundation, the Aaron Copland Fund for American Music, the Frank & Lydia Bergen Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and many others in order to support the orchestra’s local programs. Mr. Spalding has taken the Philadelphia Virtuosi to prestigious venues such as New York’s Lincoln Center, Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and twice to the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, where it was acclaimed by the Palm Beach Daily News as the classical performance highlight of the season. Since 1996, the orchestra has performed in 26 states including performances in major metropolitan centers such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago, Miami, and Phoenix. Internationally, Daniel Spalding has taken the orchestra to the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts and on three extensive tours to South America, where they have performed at many important international festivals and appeared on Brazilian National Television. In 2009 they are scheduled to perform in Serbia and at the Bosporus Festival in Istanbul.

Daniel Spalding is well known as a recording artist having secured an impressive international reputation through a series of CDs with the Philadelphia Virtuosi on Connoisseur Society, Naxos, and New World Records. Pianoforte (UK) described their debut CD (Shchedrin’s Carmen), which was a Grammy finalist, as “a real success…a delight, full of fresh ideas…highly polished,” and the American Record Guide called it “powerful…highly entertaining and exciting.” His recording of the music of American composer George Antheil for Naxos American Classics (including the enigmatic Ballet Mecanique) was “Editor’s Choice” for Gramophone and “highly recommended” by BBC Radio 3. Commenting that “Spalding gives a stunningly tight performance, captivating the listener throughout,” the London Observer named it as one of the best recordings of the year and it was also named as one of the top 10 classical CD’s of 2001 by the Chicago Tribune. Daniel Spalding’s newest releases include another all George Antheil album of rare works for New World Records and an all Howard Hanson album on Naxos American Classics, both of which have received many favorable reviews. One of his latest projects is his world premiere recording of Vittorio Giannini’s Piano Concerto & Symphony No. 4 with England’s Bournemouth Symphony, a highly anticipated CD which was released in early 2009 on Naxos. He has also recently recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra for Vienna Modern Masters.

Daniel Spalding has guest conducted leading orchestras as well as opera and ballet companies throughout Europe and North America. Notable appearances include a sold out, standing room only performance of the Mozart Requiem at Eglise de la Madeleine in Paris, an extended run of the Nutcracker with the Madison Ballet (Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra), Il Trovatore with the Kolozvar Hungarian State Opera, and Music from the Movies with the Sacramento Symphony. Early in his career, Daniel Spalding was recommended by Aaron Copland to present an All-American Concert with the Belgrade Philharmonic that was broadcast world-wide on Voice of America, including the rarely heard Copland Piano Concerto and the Yugoslavian premiere of John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. He made his debut in England with the Guildford Philharmonic and has appeared several times as a guest conductor with the London Mozart Players at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He often conducts in Russia where he has appeared with the National Russian Philharmonic in Tomsk and the Symphony Orchestra of the State Academic Cappella of St. Petersburg. In recent years he has collaborated extensively with the Polish Philharmonic of Opole, where he conducts each season.

Sought after as an educator, Daniel Spalding is an experienced motivator and teacher. Since his first academic appointment at age 23 as the youngest faculty member ever at Western Illinois University, he served on the faculty at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Illinois State University, and Stephen F. Austin State University, where he helped found the first university-community orchestra. His work with the New Jersey State Youth Orchestra brought tremendous growth to that organization including the establishment of a summer string music camp, field trips and tours. In the space of five years he changed the student orchestra at the College of New Jersey from a small string ensemble into a full fledged symphony orchestra that performed major repertoire. While at the College of New Jersey he also served on the faculty of the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts. Several times he has been a pre-concert lecturer for the Philadelphia Orchestra and has lectured at City University of London, Westminster Choir College, and other leading institutions. He has guest conducted the New Jersey and Kansas All-State Orchestras, and a number of regional orchestras and university orchestras across the nation, including the University of Illinois Symphony at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. In 2007 Mr. Spalding traveled to Uganda, where he gave conducting master classes for the Kampala Music School and helped organize and conduct the first orchestral/massed choir concert ever to take place in that city. In demand as a clinician and adjudicator, since 1973 he has participated in over 250 music festivals throughout North and South America and Europe.

Born in Wichita, Kansas, Daniel Spalding is a member of the Wyandotte Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. He currently resides in New Jersey with is wife, the Romanian born concert pianist Gabriela Imreh, who often performs with her husband and the PVCO on their many tours.