Sylvia Alimena
Sylvia Alimena, named to the “Music Hall of Fame” by
Washingtonian Magazine has an active conducting schedule throughout
the area. In addition to her role as music director and conductor
of the McLean Orchestra, she also leads the critically acclaimed
Eclipse Chamber Orchestra and Brass of Peace Scholarship Ensemble.
She is currently in her 20th season as hornist with the National
Symphony Orchestra.
A native of Long Island, New York, she began
playing the french horn in the
Hicksville Public Schools at the age of nine. When she began
private lessons
at age fifteen, she was awarded a full scholarship to study
privately with
Arthur E. Goldstein, formerly of the Chicago Symphony.
Ms. Alimena continued her musical studies at Boston University
and was a pupil of Harry Shapiro of the Boston Symphony.
In 1981, she was a first-place winner of the Boston University
Concert-Aria Competition, and in the summer of that year
was awarded a fellowship at the Tanglewood Music Center.
In
1980, Ms. Alimena began her professional career in Boston
as a member of
the Boston Ballet Orchestra, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra,
and the
Beacon Brass Quintet, and as Principal horn of the Boston
Lyric Opera and the
New Hampshire Symphony. She was critically acclaimed for
her solo and offstage playing in the Boston Lyric Opera’s
1983 New York and Boston productions of Wagner’s Das Ring
Des Nibelungen. In November of that year, the Beacon Brass
Quintet made its Carnegie Hall debut as the only brass quintet
ever to win the coveted Concert Artists Guild Award.
After
spending one year in the Utah Symphony under the baton
of Joseph
Silverstein, Ms. Alimena arrived in Washington in the fall
of 1985 to take the
post of second horn of the National Symphony Orchestra. Her
conducting career began in January of 1990 when she was asked
to take over the helm of Brass of Peace, a scholarship program
for talented high school musicians. The 2005-2006 season
will mark her sixteenth season as music director of Brass
of Peace. In her fourteen seasons as Music Director of the
critically acclaimed Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, Ms. Alimena
has conducted several world premiere performances including
the ensemble’s commissioned works Late Victorians (1995)
and Alcott Portraits (1999), by Composer-In-Residence Mark
Adamo; and Morning Music (1996), Concertino for Horn (2001)
and Concertino for Flute (2002) by Composer-In-Residence
Truman Harris. Ms. Alimena has conducted two critically acclaimed
Washington premieres: John Adam’s Chamber Symphony No. 1
and Tango by Juan Orengo-Salas.
Ms. Alimena has appeared as
guest conductor of the University of Maryland Symphony
Orchestra, the Peabody Symphony and has conducted a series
of
“National Symphony Orchestra In Your Neighborhood” concerts
with the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra on behalf of the National
Symphony Orchestra. She was the backstage conductor for a 1999 Aspen Music Festival
production of the final act of Die Gotterdammerung with James Conlon conducting
as well as on-stage auxiliary conductor for a production of Wozzeck also with
James Conlon conducting. Ms. Alimena also recently completed nine years as music
director and conductor of the Friday Morning Music Club Orchestra with a performance
of music from Wagner’s Das Ring des Nibelungen as part of the Wagner Society/Smithsonian
Institute “Epic Ring” seminar.
Her conducting teachers include Franz Welser-Moest, Music
Director of The
Cleveland Orchestra, Murry Sidlin at the Aspen Music Festival,
and Gunther
Schuller at the Sandpoint Music Festival.