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 and 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.