MostArts magic continues: Opening Gala Concert July 23 led by conductor Yuval Zaliouk
Yuval Zaliouk, the internationally renowned conductor of symphony orchestras from London to Toledo, OH, joined Alfred University’s MostArts Festival in 2015 and has returned as conductor of the MostArts Festival Orchestra for every Festival since.
He’ll be back again this summer to lead the MostArts Festival Orchestra in its Opening Gala Concert July 23. Under Zaliouk’s direction the concert will feature Carey Byron of Los Angeles, CA, who won the 2019 MostArts Young Pianist Grand Prize. Byron will perform the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor by Camille Saint-Saens.
The 2023 MostArts Festival will continue through July 29, and Zaliouk will lead the Festival Orchestra on two evenings in the week of classical music: Tuesday, July 25, in a special Family Concert featuring pianists Lucy Mauro and Anthony Pattin in Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals; and Saturday, July 29, when the Gala Finale Concert features the acclaimed Russian pianist, Asiya Korepanova, performing the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Serge Rachmaninoff in celebration of the composer’s 150th birthday anniversary.
Zaliouk says he looks forward to his annual summer visits to Western New York, where the MostArts Festival offers “a celebration of good music, both symphonic and chamber, and a joy of camaraderie and good music making …. I always come out of this particular event with the realization that classical music will live forever and exceptional talents will continue to make sure it does.”
Together, he and Alfred University Professor of Music Lisa Lantz, founder and Artistic Director of the MostArts Festival, have formed a partnership under which the orchestra has grown and matured. It is a role for which Zaliouk was perfectly suited.
In 1980, he was appointed Music Director and Conductor of The Toledo Symphony in Ohio, a position he held for nine years. During that period, the symphony’s number of subscribers tripled, and the orchestra and Zaliouk eventually won first prize for Progressive Programming by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
Zaliouk has earned a reputation as a champion of American and contemporary music, but he was born in Israel in 1939 and studied at the Haifa Academy of Music as a youth. He began his professional career as Director and Conductor of the Royal Ballet Company, in London, where he was the principal conductor for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.
He subsequently held directorships with The Opera Studio, in Paris; the Edmonton Symphony, in Canada; and the Haifa Symphony, in Israel. Following his tenure as Music Director and Conductor of the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, he was appointed Conductor Laureate of that orchestra. He continues to conduct orchestras around the world.
Following each evening’s performance, he will join the rest of the MostArts Festival Orchestra and community at an open – and quite likely exuberant – reception in Ade Hall.
“I find it hard to describe the pleasure and satisfaction this festival provides for me and all participants on both sides of the proscenium arch.”