Love is Love is Love is…

Esteemed conductor and pianist Dr. Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez is Artistic Director of Musica Viva NY and Director of Music at the historic Unitarian Church of All Souls in Manhattan. He is also Artistic Director and co-founder of the New Orchestra of Washington, and Artistic Director of the Victoria Bach Festival. He has earned accolades from The Washington Post as a conductor “with the incisive clarity of someone born to the idiom,” as well as praise from The New York Times for leading “a stirring performance” of Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem. At a concert commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Armistice (featuring the world premiere of Joseph Turrin’s cantata, And Crimson Roses Once Again Be Fair) Oberon’s Grove wrote: “Maestro Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez drew rich, warm sounds from the musicians” in “a beautiful and deeply moving program.” He is featured in El mundo en las manos/Creadores mexicanos en el extranjero (The World in Their Hands/Creative Mexicans Abroad), a book by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs honoring Mexican nationals who are leading figures in diverse artistic fields. He is the recipient of a 2016 Shenandoah Conservatory Alumni of Excellence Award for his exemplary contribution to his profession, national level of prominence, and exceptional integrity. He resides in New York City.

In 2016, during its 40th anniversary season, Hernandez-Valdez was named the third Artistic Director of the Victoria Bach Festival in Texas. As Mike Greenberg wrote in Classical Voice America: “A big question mark hung over the venerable Victoria Bach Festival two years ago when the brilliant Craig Hella Johnson, its artistic director since 1992, decided to give up the post…Johnson’s successor has replaced the question mark with an exclamation point — perhaps more appropriately, given his Spanish name and Mexican provenance, two exclamation points: ¡Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez!” “The results,” Greenberg continued, “were astonishing.”

Founded in 1977, Musica Viva NY was recently praised by The New York Times as “an excellent chorus.” The ensemble has a longstanding tradition of top-caliber performances, innovative programming, and a strong dedication to the commissioning of new music. Its alumni include Renée Fleming, Samuel Ramey, and Michael Maliakel. Since taking the helm at Musica Viva NY in 2015, Hernandez-Valdez has presented an exceptionally broad and innovative repertoire in each of the choir’s seasons, engaging and inspiring audiences with remarkable interpretations of familiar and new works, and exploring the acoustical capabilities of the historic sanctuary of All Souls Church and other venues on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

As the Artistic Director and co-founder of the New Orchestra of Washington (NOW), a chamber orchestra that “has constituted itself in the forefront of this smaller-is-better movement” (The Washington Post), Hernandez-Valdez has been reimagining for the past ten years what have been the limited definitions of “classical music.” NOW’s innovative programming and creative approach to music performance continues to reshape and enrich the cultural landscape of the National Capital Region.

A passionate advocate of new music, Hernandez-Valdez has commissioned and premiered works by Joan Tower, Arturo Márquez, Joseph Turrin, Gilda Lyons, Seymour Bernstein, Viet Cuong, Juan Pablo Contreras, Elena Ruehr, Ramzi Aburedwan, Jorge Vidales, Mokale Koapeng, Trent Johnson, Javier Farias, Andrés Levell, Zachary Wadsworth, Martin Spruijt, Joel Friedman, and other notable composers.

Hernandez-Valdez’s guest conducting engagements include appearances at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Lincoln Center in New York City, and the historic Degollado Theatre in Guadalajara, Mexico, where he has directed the Jalisco Philharmonic. As a pianist, Hernandez-Valdez performed for the 2013 Britten100 festival in New York City, organized by the Britten-Pears Foundation to honor the 100th anniversary of the titular composer’s birth. As a composer and conductor, he led the premiere of his own composition, The Imaginary City, a cantata inspired by the life of Ramzi Aburedwan, a violist who has opened schools throughout Palestine to teach music to children in refugee camps. He also arranged and premiered the chamber orchestra version of A Song of Nature by Seymour Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein, the subject of Ethan Hawke’s 2014 documentary film, Seymour: An Introduction, is one of Hernandez-Valdez’s most influential teachers and mentors.

American violinist Kevin Zhu has amassed an outstanding record of concert performances and competition wins since he began playing violin at age three. Praised for his “awesome technical command and maturity” (The Strad) and “absolute virtuosity, almost blinding in its incredible purity” (L’ape musicale), Kevin has performed on the world’s largest stages, ranging from the Konzerthaus Berlin to London’s Royal Festival Hall to the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. Initially coming to international attention after winning the 2018 Paganini Competition and 2012 Yehudi Menuhin Competition, he has established himself as a leading figure among the next generation of musicians, astonishing audiences with his peerless technical mastery and inimitable artistic voice.

In the 2023–24 season, Kevin makes his Kennedy Center debut performing Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium) with the New Orchestra of Washington, returns to the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid and Victoria Hall in Singapore, and tours with cellist Jan Vogler and pianist Andrew Armstrong. Kevin embarks on a multi-city recital tour across China and makes his debut at the Esplanade Concert Hall with Shostakovich’s 1st Violin Concerto.

Recent performing highlights include concerts on Paganini’s famed violin ‘Il Cannone’, concerto appearances in Beijing and at the historic Reggia di Caserta in Italy, and recitals in Santiago de Chile and Montréal’s Salle Bourgie. Kevin is also a passionate chamber musician, collaborating frequently with artists such as Louis Lortie, Lawrence Power, and Boris Giltburg.

In addition to his endeavors on stage, Kevin serves as a Culture Ambassador of the Lin Yao Ji Music Foundation of China. He has been featured on ABC Eyewitness News, BBC Radio 3, and RAI Radio 3, and is the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant.

Kevin holds a Bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman and Li Lin. Kevin performs on the c.1700 “ex-Petri” Antonio Stradivari violin, which is on loan from the Ryuji Ueno Foundation and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative.

Learn more at kevinzhuviolin.com

Gabriel Mata (pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah) M.F.A is a Mexican U.S. American dance choreographer, educator, dance film maker, and performer. He also navigates the world as queer, Latinx, immigrant, and as of recently a permanent resident to the U.S. He creates with a humanistic and egalitarian process while developing practices of decentering / decolonizing. The StarTribune has called him “Sly, subtle and totally virtuosic, theatrical dancer-choreographer Gabriel Mata holds the stage with expressive movement and witty words.”

Gabriel Mata/Movement is a Washington DC project-based company, initiated in 2015. His dance works have been performed in Minnesota, California, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In collaboration with haus of bambi, he has created dance films. His dances have been commissioned and presented by Georgian Court University, sjDANCEco, the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers, Dance Place, Silicon Valley Pride, and the Hispanic National Bar Association. Recently, he was awarded the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grant. He received his Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Maryland - College Park. He can be found at gabrielmatamovement.com

Amelia Rose Estrada is a queer, Latina-Jewish performance maker and scholar. She is interested in crafting work that speaks to Latinidad, gender, queerness, and intergenerational ancestral relationality. Her work draws on methods from dance, performance art, and theater. Her choreography has been presented at University Settlement in NYC, SPACE in Portland, Maine, the Spark Theater Festival NYC, and at Cuerpo Mediado Festival de Videodanza in Rosario, Argentina, among others.

As a theater creative, Amelia co-choreographed CarmXn, a modern adaptation of the opera Carmen with Hogfish Maine, was the associate choreographer for Moonbox’s production of Sweeney Todd, and co-directed and choreographed the musical adaptation of Twelfth Night at Tufts University. In addition to her individual projects, Amelia makes lesbian dance theater with her artistic partner, Elle Jansen, under the company name MELLE. As a freelance performing artist, she has had the pleasure of working with Edwin and Matt Cahill, Joy Clark, Eventual Dance Company, Brian Sanders' JUNK, and Leilani Chirino Dance and Drum Ensemble, among others.

Amelia is a PhD candidate in the Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and her current research focuses on how dance participates in the cultural and national imaginary of Dominicanidad in the Dominican Republic and diaspora.

Find her online at aremoves.com

Violin I
Akemi Takayama, concertmaster
Alex Fortes
Matt Richardson
Nancy Jin
Micca Page
Gabrielle Gans

Violin II
Sergey Prokofyev
Lauren Scott
Chae Yeom
Debo Katz
Shu-Ting Yao

Viola
Greg Luce, principal
Ivan Mendoza
Dan Zhang

Cello
Valeriya Sholokhova, principal
Tobias Werner
Joseph Gotoff

Double Bass
Chris Chlumsky, principal
Teddy Hersey

Harp
Eric Sabatino

Percussion and Timpani
Lee Hinkle, principal
Isabella Scotti
Eunice Sun
Jack Kerness
Mako Robeson
Michael Valente