ORCHESTRAL FACULTY
FACULTY BY AREA
Bands
Brass
Choirs
Composition and Technology
Conducting
Jazz Studies
Keyboard
Music Education
Musicology
Orchestras
Percussion
Strings
Theory
Voice, and Opera
Woodwinds
Gerardo Edelstein, Director of Orchestral Studies
A native of Argentina, Maestro Gerardo F. Edelstein has conducted orchestras and choirs in Europe, South America, Asia and the United States.
Mr. Edelstein graduated with high honors from the National Conservatory of Music in Buenos Aires in Piano and from the J. J. Castro Conservatory of La Lucila in Choral Conducting. He continued his music education in Israel at the Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music where he won the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Scholarship awarded by the American/Israel Cultural Foundation. In the United States he received a master’s degree in orchestral conducting from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. His teachers include Mendi Rodan, Helmuth Rilling and Larry Rachleff, among others.
In Argentina, he conducted several instrumental and vocal ensembles and as principal conductor of the Jerusalem Oratorio Choir and Orchestra in Israel, Mr. Edelstein appeared on radio and television and toured throughout the country performing the masterworks of the choral-symphonic repertoire.
In the United States, Maestro Edelstein served as assistant conductor, associate conductor and music advisor for the Richmond Symphony in Virginia for three seasons, conducting a variety of performances including several subscription series. Under his leadership, the Symphony won first prize in the year 2000 for innovative music programming awarded by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. In addition, Mr. Edelstein was music director and conductor of the Penn’s Woods Summer Music Festival in State College, Pennsylvania for two seasons.
Gerardo Edelstein has guest conducted the Israel Sinfonietta, the Israel Kibbutz Orchestra, the Houston Chamber Orchestra, the Houston Ballet in full performances of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker”, the San Antonio Metropolitan Ballet, the Pennsylvania Chamber Chorale and Orchestra, the Kalamazoo Symphony, the Bohuslav Martinu Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Tucuman Symphony Orchestra and Choir in Argentina. In the summer of 2004, Mr. Edelstein was invited to conduct in the first international orchestra festival in Dublin, Ireland.
Committed to the education of young musicians, Mr. Edelstein has served as clinician and guest conductor for many orchestra festivals in Virginia, Texas, Vermont and Pennsylvania and has collaborated with such orchestras as the San Antonio Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony. He gave master classes and conducting workshops in the United States as well as the Catholic University in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Currently, Mr. Edelstein is director of orchestral studies and music director of the Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestras at the Pennsylvania State University.
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