N.M. Symphony Orchestra's annual concert is Tuesday

Members of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra perform last year at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gallup. The Orchestra will give a free performance Tuesday evening at Sacred Heart Cathedral. (Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent File Photo)

Independent staff

GALLUP — Classical music lovers take note the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra will be performing once again in Gallup.

The orchestra, under the direction of Guillermo Figueroa, will be performing at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 25, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral, 415 E. Green. The annual concert, which is free to the public, is being sponsored by the Cathedral, El Rancho Hotel, and The Independent.

The orchestra will be performing Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Russian Easter Overture; Edouard Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, Op. 21; and Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 in e minor, Op. 95 "From the New World." The concert's featured soloist will be violinist David Felberg, the associate concertmaster of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

Conductor and violinist Guillermo Figueroa is one of the most renowned and versatile musicians of his generation. In May 2001 he was named Music Director of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, becoming the first Puerto Rican-born conductor to lead in important orchestra in the United States.

Figueroa began violin studies with his father Guillermo, and later with his uncle Jose at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where he also worked with Pablo Casals. He attended The Juilliard School where his teachers were Oscar Shumsky and Felix Galimir.

For 10 years, Figueroa was the concertmaster of the New York City Ballet, appearing in over a hundred performances of the violin concerti by Stravinsky, Berg, Prokofiev, Brahms, Barber, Adams, and Glass. In 1994 Figueroa made his Lincoln Center conducting debut with the New York City Ballet. In his dual role as soloist and conductor, Figueroa has appeared with the Kansas City Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, and the Iceland Symphony.

With a special affinity for the music of the great French composer Hector Berlioz, Figueroa created, with the NMSO, the most comprehensive Berlioz Festival in the United States. Also committed to the music of his native Puerto Rico, Figueroa has given the world premiers of works by important composers such as Erneso Cordero, Raymond Torres, Carlos Vazquez and Mariano Morales.

Felberg, a native of Albuquerque, is currently the associate concertmaster of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. He performs regularly throughout the Southwest as concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. Also active as a conductor, Felberg has conducted the NMSO in performances of the Nutcracker ballet, and he made his operatic conducting debut in the summer of 2003 in The Emerald city Opera's production of "The Magic Flute."

Felberg is also currently the music director of the Albuquerque Philharmonic, and founder and conductor of Chatter, a chamber ensemble, a group dedicated to performing 20th and 21st century music.

The NMSO is a 75-member, fully professional ensemble and one of the nation's leading orchestras. Deeply committed to educational activities and to serving the multi-cultural communities in New Mexico, the orchestra performs each year for an audience of more than 130,000, with over half of the audience members attending free concerts.

In 2000 the NMSO was named by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as one of only fifteen orchestras nationwide in a nine-year program to recognize orchestras on the cutting edge of the field. The smallest orchestra to participate in this program, the NMSO enjoys the company of the orchestras of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Baltimore, and others.

Important community activities include a series of five to nine concerts each year in neighborhood and community centers as well as major collaborations with several of the New Mexico pueblos and the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico.