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.

Ukrainian-American cellist Valeriya Sholokhova is an in-demand soloist and chamber musician based in New York City. She has performed on renowned stages such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, David Geffen Hall, The Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum, and Saturday Night Live. Valeriya has toured extensively across Europe, with performances in Denmark, Austria, Croatia, Poland, the Baltic States, Sweden, Germany, and Ukraine. In 2022, she co-founded Trio Fadolin, an ensemble exploring the unique sound of the six-string fadolin. The trio has since received Chamber Music America’s Ensemble Forward Grant and recorded an album of newly commissioned works.

Valeriya is a laureate of several international competitions, including the Liezen International Cello Competition and the Antonio Janigro Competition. She has served as principal cellist at notable festival orchestras such as Spoleto Festival USA, Orchestra of the Americas, the Perlman Music Program, Music Academy of the West, and Thy Music Festival in Denmark. Currently, she holds principal cello positions with The New Orchestra of Washington, The Refugee Orchestra Project, The Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, and is on the Lincoln Center Stage roster. In 2021, Valeriya performed the U.S. premiere of Peteris Vasks’ Cello Concerto No. 2 in Boston, alongside members of the Boston Philharmonic.

Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Valeriya graduated from The Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music, where she studied on full scholarship with Bonnie Hampton and David Geber. She also pursued studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Professor Morten Zeuthen. In addition to her performing career, Valeriya is dedicated to community outreach, regularly performing through Sing for Hope at hospitals, nursing homes, and correctional facilities.

Clarinetist Jo-Ann Sternberg leads a diverse musical life in the New York area as a chamber musician, orchestral player, music educator, and interpreter of new music. Jo-Ann is a member of the Borealis Wind Quintet, the Richardson Chamber Players, the Saratoga Chamber Players, Wind Soloists of New York, and the Riverside Symphony; principal clarinet of the orchestras of the Oratorio Society of NY, the NY Choral Society, and St. John the Divine; and she has regularly performed and toured with Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance, the American Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Musicians from Marlboro, and a number of Broadway musicals.

Following her undergraduate years in the combined Tufts University/New England Conservatory dual degree program (BA in English/BM in Clarinet Performance) where she was mentored by Peter Hadcock, Ms. Sternberg continued her studies at Yale University with David Shifrin and at The Juilliard School with Charles Neidich where she was awarded the William Kapell Memorial Award. Currently, Ms. Sternberg serves on the faculties of Princeton University, Rutgers Mason Gross School of Music, and the Music Advancement Program at the Juilliard School; she also maintains an active teaching studio from her New York City home. Additionally, she serves as a mentor for the Juilliard Mentoring Program and is a coach for the New York Youth Symphony.

In the summer months, Ms. Sternberg lives in Maine where she is the Founder and Artistic Director of The Maine Chamber Music Seminar at Snow Pond for college and graduate-level musicians. She also performs and teaches at the Chamber Music Conference & Composers’ Forum of the East, and participates in numerous performance residences throughout greater New England. Previous summers have featured performance residencies at the Portland Chamber Music Festival, Salt Bay ChamberFest, Mount Desert Chamber Music Festival, Sebago/Long Lake Festival, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Marlboro, Norfolk, North Country Chamber Players, and Ravinia.

From September through May, Jo-Ann resides in NYC with her family. Ms. Sternberg is a Selmer Artist.

Violin I
Akemi Takayama, concertmaster
Chaeyoung Yeom
Rachel Lee Zhao
Matt Richardson
Sherri Zhang
Charles Cleason

Violin II
Sergey Prokofyev, principal
Nancy Jin
Milena Aradski
Eva Cappelletti Chao
Mia Lee

Viola
Greg Luce, principal
Ivan Mendoza
Cameron Raecke
Stanley Beckwith

Cello
Valeriya Sholokhova, principal
Tobias Werner
Nick Pascucci

Double Bass
Chris Chlumsky, principal
Jessica Eig

Flute and Piccolo
Conor Nelson, principal
Rachel Woolf

Oboe
Stephen Key, principal
Luis Gutierrez

Clarinet
Kathy Mulcahy, principal
Jacob Moyer

Bassoon
Eddie Sanders, principal
Jimmy Ren

French Horn
Shona Goldberg-Leopold, principal
Chandra Cervantes
Patrick Furlo
Justin Drew

Trumpet
Chris Carrillo, principal
John Abbracciamento

Trombone
David Perkel, principal

Percussion and Timpani
David Constantine, principal
Jeffrey Grant

Celesta and Piano
Grace Cho