Composer Profile: Gabriela Lena Frank in Conversation with Christian Baldini

In preparation for our performance of her Elegía andina in Sacramento with the Camellia Symphony Orchestra, I had the pleasure of asking composer Gabriela Lena Frank a few questions about her music. Below are the answers:

Christian Baldini: Thank you very much for agreeing to answer some questions! In your program notes to the Elegía, you note that you "continue to thrive on multiculturalism", and I find this fascinating, especially considering what a rich cultural background you possess as the daughter of a Lithuanian-Jewish father and a Chinese-Peruvian-Spanish mother. Can you tell us more about how this influenced your upbringing, and your music in particular?

Gabriela Lena Frank: Well, my first exposure to music from my mother’s homeland came through Berkeley’s La Peña when it was in its original location at the Julia Morgan Theater on College Avenue.  In the 70s and 80s, there was so much turmoil in Latin America that many refugees were fleeing to the US, bringing their cuisine and music.  At these concerts, I could see Peruvians that looked like my Mom, playing instruments that she had described to me, and I was transported, mentally and emotionally, to a mystical place that beckoned a cultural homecoming.  I loved the music and would come home, trying to make my piano sound like what I had heard in the concerts.  Now, I do this for a living!  

CB: You are an extremely successful artist, nowadays Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, previously with the Detroit Symphony, and you were included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017). We are performing your Elegía andina, which is your very first orchestral piece, written in 2000 for the Albany Symphony and dedicated to your older brother. Did you imagine that you would have such a phenomenal ride when you started composing? 

GLF: No. Way.  I thought that the lack of representation for women and especially women of color was symptomatic of an industry that would never fully welcome me, but I was determined to explore my nerdy ideas, anyway, with as much joy and fervor as I could muster.  That I’ve been able to overcome quite a few hurdles for many years to slowly make my way to this point is pretty astonishing to me.  I’m delighted to see that my emerging colleagues are generally benefiting from the progress that folks my generation were able to make, and I hope they can go even farther than me.  

CB: You have done so much to help young musicians, especially composers, through your "Creative Academy of Music". Could you tell us how this incredible project started? How did you come up with such an idea? 

GLF: My husband and I took a cross-country trip during the final months of the 2016 presidential election, which was a truly dispiriting affair.  During that trip, we drove through areas that were culturally desolate and economically impoverished, and I could see for my own eyes why certain violent messages of division and hatred were appealing.  All the ideas that had been fomenting in me over many years regarding art and arts citizenship really came to fore, and I felt that I simply had to do something.  So, GLFCAM was born, and we try to give a richly diverse array of voices a potent boost, artistically and professionally.  Their voices need to be heard.  

CB: Who are some important figures that have inspired you in your education and training? Are there any people that you think you will will always be grateful to, and why?

GLF: I’ll always be grateful to certain private teachers — Piano teachers Jeanne Kierman Fischer and Logan Skelton, and composers Sam Jones, William Bolcom, and Leslie Bassett.  They saw what I could be, and are in every word of advice that I now speak to my mentees.  

CB: In your opinion, what is the role of art in society nowadays? 

GLF: To reveal connections in startling new ways; to build character through the art of story-telling; to inspire people to create rather than to make war; to bring people together in the same space to really see one another.  

CB: Sometimes we read or hear depressing comments that classical music audiences are aging. Do you believe in this, and if so, what should or could be done to reverse this trend and invigorate our audiences?

GLF: I’ve heard this since I was a teenager and I think we’ve been mistaking seismic shifts for the very death of our industry.  Change is not death.  Change is how an art form continues to live even if it’s unrecognizable from before.  That said, efforts to retool’s people’s instant reaction to the words “classical” are needed.  That will only happen when it is no longer elitist but available for everyone.  

CB: What do you seek to achieve with every new piece that you write? What is your main motivation for writing music?

GLF: I write to tell stories, and stories exist to enlarge our reality so that we can really be human, not merely a reactive organism.  Sometimes the stories are clumsy or new to me — Elegia Andina, as you note, was my first orchestra work, and I was sweating bullets the entire time I was putting notes to the page.  Yet, even then, my motivation was the same — To touch people and remind them how large this beautiful world is.  I humbly ask to be that messenger.  

CB: Thank you very much for your time and for answering these questions in such a candid manner. We very much look forward to sharing your beautiful music with our audiences here in Sacramento!

GLF: You are very welcome.  I wish I could be there to join you!

Included in the Washington Post's list of the 35 most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

Moreover, she writes, "There's usually a story line behind my music; a scenario or character." While the enjoyment of her works can be obtained solely from her music, the composer's program notes enhance the listener's experience, for they describe how a piano part mimics a marimba or pan-pipes, or how a movement is based on a particular type of folk song, where the singer is mockingly crying. Even a brief glance at her titles evokes specific imagery: Leyendas (Legends): An Andean Walkabout; Cuentos Errantes (Wandering Songs); and La Llorona (The Crying Woman): Tone Poem for Viola and Orchestra. Frank’s compositions also reflect her virtuosity as a pianist — when not composing, she is a sought-after performer, specializing in contemporary repertoire.

Winner of a Latin Grammy and nominated for Grammys as both composer and pianist, Gabriela also holds a Guggenheim Fellowship and a USA Artist Fellowship given each year to fifty of the country’s finest artists. Her work has been described as “crafted with unself-conscious mastery” (Washington Post), “brilliantly effective” (New York Times), “a knockout” (Chicago Tribune) and “glorious” (Los Angeles Times). Gabriela Lena Frank is regularly commissioned by luminaries such as cellist Yo Yo Ma, soprano Dawn Upshaw, the King’s Singers, and the Kronos Quartet, as well as by the talents of the next generation such as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin of the New York Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra. She has received orchestral commissions and performances from leading American orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the San Francisco Symphony. In 2017, she completed her four-year tenure as composer-in-residence with the Detroit Symphony under maestro Leonard Slatkin, composing Walkabout: Concerto for Orchestra, as well as a second residency with the Houston Symphony under Andrés Orozco-Estrada for whom she composed the Conquest Requiem, a large-scale choral/orchestral work in Spanish, Latin, and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Frank’s most recent premiere is Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra commissioned by Carnegie Hall and premiered by the National Youth Orchestra of the United States under the baton of conductor Marin Alsop. In the season of 2019-20, Fort Worth Opera will premiere Frank’s first opera, The Last Dream of Frida (with a subsequent performance by co-commissioner San Diego Opera) utilizing words by her frequent collaborator Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz. 

Gabriela Lena Frank is the subject of several scholarly books including the W.W. Norton Anthology: The Musics of Latin America; Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers (Scarecrow Press); and In her Own Words(University of Illinois Press). She is also the subject of several PBS documentaries including Compadre Huashayo regarding her work in Ecuador composing for the Orquestra de Instrumentos Andinos comprised of native highland instruments; and Música Mestiza, regarding a workshop she led at the University of Michigan composing for a virtuoso septet of a classical string quartet plus a trio of Andean panpipe players. Música Mestiza, created by filmmaker Aric Hartvig, received an Emmy Nomination for best Documentary Feature in 2015. 

Civic outreach is an essential part of Frank’s work. She has volunteered extensively in hospitals and prisons, with a recent project working with deaf African-American high school students in Detroit who rap in sign language. In 2017, Frank founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, a non-profit training institution that offers emerging composers short-term retreats at Gabriela’s two farms in Mendocino County, CA. Over two visits, participants receive artistic and professional mentorship from Gabriela as well as readings of works in progress by guest faculty master performers in advance of the works' public world premieres at the academy. In support of arts citizenship, the Academy also pairs participant composers and faculty performers with underrepresented rural communities in a variety of projects such as working with students at the Anderson Valley Junior/Senior High enrolled in basic music composition class.  

During the 2018-2019 season, Frank leads four composer residencies across the US, including performances of her recent works as well as large-scale commissions: composer-in-residence with Philadelphia Orchestra through 2021, visiting artist-in-residence with Vanderbilt University, a composer residency with the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, and is the featured composer for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s Music in Color concert series. In 2017, Frank founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, CA which provides mentorship, readings-to-premieres residencies, and commissions for emerging composers from diverse backgrounds in addition to fostering public school programs in low-arts rural public schools.

Frank attended Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she earned a B.A. (1994) and M.A. (1996). She studied composition with Sam Jones, and piano with Jeanne Kierman Fischer. At the University of Michigan, where she received a D.M.A. in composition in 2001, Gabriela studied with William Albright, William Bolcom, Leslie Bassett, and Michael Daugherty, and piano with Logan Skelton. She currently resides in Boonville, a small rural town in the Anderson Valley of northern California, with her husband Jeremy on their mountain farm, has a second home in her native Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, and travels frequently in South America.  

Gabriela Lena Frank's music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, Inc. 

Wonderful Review for the Camellia Symphony Orchestra, Er-Gene Kahng & Christian Baldini

"It’s a challenging proposition for an orchestra to put forward a whole program of not-very well-known music, and the Music Director Christian Baldini, and the Camellia Symphony are to be applauded for their bold programming and excellent artistic execution."

"It all took great skill for the orchestra to navigate, and Kahng’s violin offered clarity and warmth of tone, as well as brilliant precision in the technical demands.  It was a completely thrilling performance, and I joined the audience in an energized ovation."

"the orchestra navigated the surprises of this new work with great skill, and it was definitely a thought-provoking piece."

"The orchestra’s performance was brilliant and energetic, and I completely enjoyed hearing it.  I am so thrilled to have been able to attend this wonderful concert by the Camellia Symphony Orchestra – and I look forward to hearing more from this orchestra!"

Liane Curtis, a musicologist and the President of the Women's Philharmonic Advocacy, an organization "leveling the playing field for women composers" has written a glowing review of the Camellia Symphony Orchestra's last performance celebrating Black History Month. Kudos to everyone involved in making this concert such a success!

Click here to read the entire review.

Composer Profile: Chris Castro in conversation with Christian Baldini

In preparation for the world premiere performance of his new work "Sing High", written for violinist Er-Gene Kahng and the Camellia Symphony Orchestra, I had the opportunity of asking composer Chris Castro a few questions about his music, the relationship of "concert" music with other genres, and more.

Christian Baldini: Chris, it is such a pleasure to be bringing to life your new piece, especially written for our soloist and our orchestra. You were a member (principal bass) of this orchestra for two seasons. Did that inform the way you would write this piece for them?

Chris Castro: Yes, of course. I was able to play standard repertoire, 20th, and 21st century music with this group. After playing with a group for a few seasons you get an idea for what they like in sound and how much enthusiasm they bring to their performances. A highlight during my tenure with the CSO was Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. This orchestra, under your baton, has an affinity for dark hued, burnished sounds, which I kept in mind. I am also friends with many of the musicians, and included a brief melody written by the daughter of one of the horn and oboe players in the score. I thought about the orchestra throughout.

CB: You mention that much of your music is informed by other music. Can you develop some more on this concept?

CC: A lot of contemporary music I feel is often written with not necessarily a program, but with extra-musical ideas. A piece could be about climate change, or social justice, etc. While I do not think this is a bad thing I often feel like one of the last composers to hold a torch for 'abstract' music: music dealing with itself. I often think of Gérard Grisey's quote:

"We are musicians and our model is sound not literature, sound not mathematics, sound not theatre, visual arts, quantum physics, geology, astrology or acupuncture."

My friends tease me by calling me a 'repertoire hound' because I love and think about the canon of classical music often and it comes out in my music. In Sing High for example, after the opening chord in the orchestra, four percussive attacks are heard in the woodblock and clave. While I use this motive differently, it is a direct allusion to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Just one detail of many veiled references to a wealth of classical and jazz repertoire that I feel I must come to terms with in my own way. My music is 'about' music.

CB: And specifically about this new piece, "Sing High", what would you say to anyone coming to the concert? What can they expect? What would you like them to take away from this performance?

CC: I can only say how I hear the piece; I do not like to tell anyone how to listen to my or any music. It has a Baroque sound to me, as the violin soloist is playing constantly, decorating the orchestral texture. The orchestra plays dark, rich, blurred sonorities mostly out of the way of the soloist. I hear it as a stoic piece, with moments of bizarre humor. It has a large narrative and arc. My music is obsessed with being transitory. A climax may be reached but the energy and momentum will be blurred to push the music forward until its final moments.

CB: Who are some musicians from the past that you wish you had worked with?

CC: What a question! For conductors, I have always admired the recordings of both Pierre Monteux and Otto Klemperer and would have loved to have played under their batons. My old bass teacher, Homer Mensch, said that of all the conductors he played under that Klemperer was the most sensitive to a soloist.

For a teacher, either the famed Nadia Boulanger or her (in my view) jazz counterpart, the great pianist Lennie Tristano. Singing and listening was everything to both of them and I would have loved the first hand experience of being taught how to listen by them.

For performers, I have always loved singers. I would have loved to play bass behind Sarah Vaughan - no one quite like her. I also fantasize about an opportunity for bass players in New York in 1978. After Eddie Gomez left Bill Evans trio Evans held auditions with the drummer Philly Joe Jones. The audition was to go to the Village Vanguard and sit in with those two. Can you imagine? The most coveted bass player seat in the history of jazz, open for all who dared. People like George Mraz and Rufus Reid tried out etc. I would have loved to have played just a single root for the greatest pianist ever.

CB: Your background as a performer is vast. You've played in orchestra for many years, including concerts with some wonderful conductors while at Juilliard or Tanglewood. Can you tell us some of the most memorable experiences you've had?

CC: I am very fortunate to have worked with some great conductors. A lot of the concerts stick out (like Das Lied von der Erde with Michael Tilson Thomas, Anne Sofie von Otter, and Gregory Kunde) but there are two rehearsals that still resonate with me. I'll never forget having Yannick Nézet-Séguin stop a rehearsal of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe and grab the meaty part of his forearm and whisper to the orchestra "This is music of the flesh...." That gesture changed the entire string sound. I couldn't believe the color change. 

All conductors have heard the Richard Strauss quote "Never look encouragingly at the brass...." The late great James DePreist was leading us in a rehearsal of Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, specifically the brass heavy "Battle Scene." He stopped us, asked the brass not to play but to listen to the intense string passages underneath them. Afterwards he rhetorically asked "Did you know all of that was going on?" DePreist was all about respect for everyone, such an egoless man, and he wanted the brass to be aware that we were all sweating, trying to keep up with their tremendous sound. Every string player was thrilled. 

CB: And how about your background playing jazz or other kinds of music? When did you become interested in this, and how has it affected your compositions?

CC: The unfortunate thing about being a classically trained double bassist is the lack of chamber music repertoire one gets to take part in. Maybe you get called to play the “Trout” Quintet every few years but that is about it. I love playing with orchestras, but I really wanted to play chamber music, to have an equal say in a group, not just have conductors mold our sound. I came to jazz late, after hearing the Miles Davis and Gil Evans "Porgy and Bess" album. After that I needed to play it, and it really filled the void of chamber music for me. I was an equal member of a small group, able to voice my opinions, either through rehearsals or the way I was playing. 

Jazz has a subtle effect on my compositions in terms of the sound, but the structure can be deliberately similar. I have a series of pieces (Choruses I - IV) that are based heavily on the formal structures of specific jazz standards. They do not, however, sound jazzy or jazz influenced. I would not consider them genre-bending or hybrids, it is simply my music being "about" other music. That being said, I do believe that jazz and jazz standards have given the 20th century a new lease on harmony, which forever obsesses me. I consider myself a harmonic composer. If I am stuck in a composition of my own I do one of two things: play a Bach chorale or a song by Rodgers & Hart.

CB: Tell us about your background and growing up in New York. How did you start learning the bass, and when did you realize it would be your career?

CC: Both of my parents were born and still live in Brooklyn, New York. It seems like a dying thing now but my elementary school had a strings program. In the 2nd grade every student started the violin. In the 3rd grade you were allowed to choose among the  violin, mandolin, cello, xylophone, and double bass. Everyone gravitated towards the mandolin and xylophone, and to be honest I felt very sad that the bass was being ignored, so I decided to try it out. My parents pushed and pushed me to practice against my will for years, driving me to rehearsals and lessons. When I was 14, after playing bass for 6 years, an orchestra I was in began rehearsing Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. That's all it took. I had no idea music could sound like that. With that piece I was either fighting back tears or trying not to drop my bass from laughter. I still am. After that I was sold on music. I have to give full credit to my parents for driving me all around New York against my will. I love them deeply.

CB: Wow. That is such a powerful and beautiful way to have realized how important music was to you! Are there any tips, or any advice you'd like to give to any aspiring young musician starting off, or considering taking music seriously?

CC: You have to love to listen. Listening is hard. You have to practice how to listen. I mean that. It is not a natural trait. Listen deeply. Listen often. Listen to something new once a week. I have often heard writers say if you want to be a better writer you just have to read. Same thing applies. Learn to listen to the way you play. Practicing means nothing if you are not listening to yourself. Practice slowly. Listen slowly. Listen, listen, listen.

CB: Thank you very much for your time, and for sharing your incredible talent with us. We very much look forward to sharing your beautiful music with our audience here in Sacramento!

CC: Thank you so much for great questions, and for leading such a great group. It has been my pleasure.

Composer Chris Castro - Photo by Justin Han, Copyright UC Regents

Chris Castro is a composer and double bassist. He has a Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from UC Davis and a Bachelor's in Music from The Juilliard School in both double bass and composition. His compositions include a work for the St. Louis Symphony and David Robertson, a piano duo for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and a love song to drunkenness, Brooklyn Narcissus, a song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra. He currently lectures at UC Davis and Sacramento State University. He is also head brewer at Pals Brewin'.

Christian Baldini in Conversation with Enrique Arturo Diemecke

Maestro Diemecke conducting the Buenos Aires Philharmonic

Maestro Diemecke at the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), joining Christian Baldini to celebrate Baldini's operatic conducting debut with Strasnoy's World Premiere (Requiem for a Nun).

Christian Baldini: Maestro Diemecke, it is a real honor to have the opportunity to ask you a few questions for our audience to learn more about your music and your musical identity. Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences with us! Your "Chacona a Chávez" is a great example of a piece that combines multiple aesthetics. You quote Handel (the Chaconne HWV 435), and you also combine your own voice and a joyful Latin American spirit, very imaginative use of diverse percussion instruments, from maracas to drums, to this Neo-Baroque Language that looks into the future. How would you explain your compositional process? Did you have the pleasure of meeting Carlos Chávez in person, and did this have an influence in you?

Enrique Arturo Diemecke: I composed this piece for the 100 anniversary of Carlos Chávez. He was the founder of many artistic organizations in Mexico, including the National Symphony. His legacy extended with the impulse of the Nationalistic movement in composition. One of his best known pieces is Chaconne in E for orchestra based on Buxtehude's organ chaconne. Chavez, like many other musicologists, have thought that the Dance chaconne was originated in Mexico. So I took a Handel chaconne with the idea of honoring Chavez.
I have added percussion instruments that were originated in both America and Europe to give the idea of going thru to the path with the rhythm as it went from America to Spain and then to France and Germany and then came back to America (Mexico).


CB: You are a world famous conductor, having lead some of the most important orchestras in Europe and North America, besides your great presence in Latin America, now as Artistic Director of the most important opera house in the continent, the historic Teatro Colón. How do you find time in your life to compose, combining your Music Directorships (Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Flint Symphony Orchestra)?

EAD: I have to say that the most difficult thing for a conductor is to build the repertoire, so I have had years conducting a vast number of compositions and thus created a "know how" that would make me able to just pick a work and perform it.

CB: What are some of the most memorable musical experiences you've gone through? And who are some of the people that inspire you the most? What are you most grateful for?

EAD: I have many great moments in my life and I have had great teachers starting with my father. Thanks to him in those early years of my childhood I was ready to have as a violin teacher one of greatest violinist of all times, Heryk Szering. But my idea was always to be a conductor so I went to study at the Pierre Monteaux School to be the assistant to Charles Bruck, one of the greatest conducting teachers ever.
If I have to mention of the best moments of my live is hard to just pick some since I consider that there are many. I have conducted so many wonderful orchestras in the world, as you just mention before. I had so many famous violinists, Perlman, Zukerman, Joshua Bell, Midori. And cellists, Rostropovich, Starker, Yo Yo MA, to name few, and many well known pianists and singers starting with Plácido Domingo, Jessy Norman, Ricciarelli, Battle, Araiza, Alagna, etc
With all of them I share memorables performances in many places in the world.


CB: Once again, Maestro, thank you for your time, and we very much look forward to featuring your beautiful Chacona a Chávez in the right context, in a program including Chávez's Sinfonía India, as well as a work by Marta Lambertini (Angel apasionado II) and by Alberto Ginastera (Piano Concerto No. 1).

EAD: Thank you for performing the dear piece of mine. Enjoy it as much as if it was your own. Best to you.

Enrique Arturo Diemecke with Joshua Bell

Enrique Diemecke is Artistic General Director of the famed Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. The first internationally acclaimed conductor to hold the position, he is in an unprecedented 12th season as Music Director of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, and his 28th season as Music Director of the award-winning Flint Symphony Orchestra in Michigan.

The leading Mexican conductor of his generation, Enrique Diemecke enjoys an international recording, operatic, and concert career. He brings an electrifying balance of passion, intellect and technique to his performances. Warmth, pulse, and spontaneity are all hallmarks of his conducting – conducting that has earned him an international reputation for performances that are riveting in their sweep and dynamism. In the words of The New York Times, Diemecke is a conductor of “fierceness and authority.” A noted interpreter of the works of Mahler, Maestro Diemecke has been awarded a Mahler Society medal for his performances of the composer’s complete symphonies.

Maestro Diemecke is a frequent guest of orchestras throughout the world, most notably the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, French National Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, L’Orchestre de Paris, Residentie Orkest in The Hague, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Residentie Orkest in The Hague, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Brisbane, the Russian National Orchestra, the Bogota Philharmonic, the Puerto Rico Symphony, Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Caracas, l’Orchestre National de Lorraine, the National Orchestra of Montpellier, the Valladolid Symphony, the ORCAM Madrid, L’Orchestre de Isle de France, and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Houston, Minnesota, and Auckland.

Maestro Diemecke is an experienced conductor of opera, having served as Music Director of the Bellas Artes Opera of Mexico from 1984-1990, where he led more than 20 productions including Faust, La bohème, Salome, Elektra, Ariadne auf Naxos, Der fliegende Hollander, Rigoletto, Turandot, Madama Butterfly, and Roméo et Juliette. He has since returned as a guest conductor with new productions of Lohengrin, Boris Godunov, and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Maestro Diemecke returned to opera as he opened the 2007-2008 season of the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires with a new production of Werther, followed by performances of Massenet’s Le Jongleur de Notre Dame with tenor Roberto Alagna in Montpellier, which was released by Deutsche Grammophon and awarded the prestigious Grand Prix de l’Academie du Disque Lyrique. He is a regular guest of the famed Teatro Zarzuela in Madrid, and was awarded the Jean Fontaine Orpheus d’Or Gold Medal for “best vocal music recording” by France’s Academy of Lyric Recordings for his recording of Donizetti’s The Exiles of Siberia with the L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Montpellier-Languedoc-Roussillon. Maestro Diemecke was previously honored with a Gold Medal from the Academy of Lyric Recordings with the Bruno Walter Orpheus d’Or Prize for “Best Opera Conductor” for his live recording of Mascagni’s Parisina, from the Radio France Festival.

With 20 years at the helm of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Maestro Diemecke led the ensemble on a ten-city tour of the United States, culminating with a program of Latin American masterworks at New York’s Carnegie Hall. He and the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México were nominated for “Best Classical Album” for the 3rd Annual Latin Grammy Awards, for their recording of Carlos Chávez’ Violin and Piano Concertos with violinist Pablo Diemecke and pianist Jorge Federico Osorio.

He is also frequently invited to festivals such as the Lincoln Center Summer Festival, the Hollywood Bowl Festival, Wolf Trap, Autumno Musicale a Como (Italy), Europalia (Brussels), World Fair Expo Sevilla (Spain), Festival International Radio France, and the World Orchestra Festival in Moscow where he led the Bogota Philharmonic.

Maestro Diemecke is an accomplished composer and orchestral arranger, and has conducted his Die-Sir-E, during the Mexican National Symphony Orchestra tour of the U.S. in 1999. The Die-Sir-E was commissioned by the Radio France Festival for the World Cup Final Concert in France in 1998. Maestro Diemecke was commissioned to write a tone poem for the Flint Symphony Orchestra, and his works Chacona a Chávez and Guitar Concerto have received many performances both in Europe and in the United States. During the 2001-2002 season, he gave the world premiere of his work Camino y vision, dedicated to President Vincente Fox, with the Tulsa Philharmonic.

Christian Baldini has served as Music Director of the Camellia Symphony Orchestra in Sacramento since 2012. He has also served as the Music Director of the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra and Barbara K. Jackson Professor of Conducting at the University of California, Davis, since 2009. With these orchestras he has conducted multiple world premieres, and local premieres of such important works as Varèse's Amériques, Luciano Berio's Sinfonia, Ligeti's Violin Concerto, and many relevant symphonic cycles like those by Sibelius, Brahms and Schumann.

Baldini has conducted opera at the English National Opera (most recently Verdi's Aida at London's Coliseum in November 2017), Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires (Dallapiccola's Il prigioniero, Dallapiccola's Volo di notte, and the world premiere of Oscar Strasnoy's Requiem), and the Aldeburgh Festival in England (Britten's The Rape of Lucretia). Since 2009 he has been the Music Director of the Rising Stars of Opera in collaboration with the San Francisco Opera at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, showcasing some of the most talented operatic singers of the young generation.

Baldini previously served as an assistant conductor with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. His CD recording "Mozart: Opera Arias and Overtures" conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was chosen as "Recording of the Month" by the BBC Classical Music Magazine, and received 4- and 5-star reviews by the specialized press. He is a frequent international guest conductor with appearances leading the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra (of Argentina and Portugal), Teatro Argentino de La Plata and the Florida Orchestra. He first came to international attention when he made his conducting debut in Salzburg at the Awards Weekend, chosen as one of three finalists selected among 91 applications worldwide.