Curator and Conductor
Conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley is the founder and Artistic Director of the internationally-acclaimed ensemble, Seraphic Fire. He frequently collaborates with the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the New World Symphony. He was nominated for a Grammy award for his recording of Brahms’s A German Requiem. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2012.
This season, Mr. Quigley takes the podium at the Cleveland Orchestra in Mozart, the Utah Symphony in Haydn, and Seraphic Fire in masterworks of Bach, Monteverdi, Pärt, and the Pulitzer-prize-winning David Lang. Mr. Quigley is a Music Director finalist for the Spartanburg Philharmonic, leading that ensemble in Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, along with music of Gliere and Mozart.
He is the recipient of the Robert Shaw Conducting Fellowship, the ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award, and the Louis Botto Award for his entrepreneurial leadership of Seraphic Fire.
Over his fifteen seasons at the helm of Seraphic Fire, one of the country’s premiere professional choral-orchestral ensembles, Mr. Quigley grew the organization’s budget to $1.6 million, started the Seraphic Fire Youth Initiative, launched the Seraphic Fire Media label (with two Grammy nominations), established Seraphic Fire’s endowment, inaugurated a unique young artist professional training program with the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA, and released fourteen recordings on the SFM label.
He holds degrees from the Yale University School of Music and the University of Notre Dame and lives with his husband in Washington DC, where they are restoring a turn-of-the century row home.
Artists
Grammy-award-winning mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken was born in 1984 and raised just outside of New Orleans. The daughter of two musicians, she grew up exposed to the great artists of jazz, rock/blues, classical, and world music. At age seventeen, she moved to New York City for undergraduate studies in opera performance at Manhattan School of Music. There, she soon found a deep love for works outside of the standard opera repertory. Ms. Warnken has performed as a soloist with the Grammy-nominated Trinity Wall Street Choir, Clarion Music Society, Musica Sacra, the Oratorio Society of New York, Philharmonia Baroque, the Carmel Bach Festival chorale and recitals, American Classical Orchestra, Seraphic Fire, TENET, and Green Mountain Project, among others. She has appeared on the main stages of Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Mass in B minor, Mozart’s Mass in C minor, and Handel’s Samson.
In 2009, Ms. Warnken became a founding member of the Grammy award-winning alternative-classical vocal band Roomful of Teeth (2014, best chamber ensemble/small ensemble), integrating western and non-western vocal techniques such as Tuvan throat singing, Inuit throat singing, yodeling, high Bulgarian-style belting, Korean P’ansori, along with several others, and collaborating with composers to forge a new repertory for the voice using an expanded sound palette. In addition to her work with Roomful of Teeth, she is a fervent advocate of contemporary music, and has performed with and premiered works by numerous prominent composers and non-classical pop/rock acts including Questlove and other members of The Roots, Glenn Kotche of Wilco, Louis Andriessen, Caleb Burhans, Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, Judd Greenstein, Missy Mazzoli, and Steve Reich.
In addition to performing, Ms. Warnken also enjoys teaching and has taught privately, guest lectured, and given masterclasses at many higher educational institutions including Yale, Princeton, Williams College, Wellesley, Vassar, and Dickinson College. She holds a masters degree from the Yale School of Music, where she took part in the Early Music voice program in conjunction with the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. During her time there, she was afforded the opportunity to work with world renowned conductors such as Masaaki Suzuki, Nic McGegan, and Simon Carrington, and went on two international tours as a soloist with Yale Schola Cantorum.
Eugene Izotov joined the San Francisco Symphony as Principal Oboe, holding the Edo de Waart Chair, in the 2015-16 season. He previously served as principal oboe of the Chicago Symphony, Metropolitan Opera, Kansas City Symphony, associate principal oboe of the San Francisco Symphony, and as guest principal oboe with the Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Izotov is the first Russian-born musician in history to hold a principal wind position in any major American symphony orchestra. His numerous awards include top prizes at solo competitions in Saint Petersburg (1991), Moscow (1990), New York (1995), and at the Fernand Gillet International Competition (2001).
Mr. Izotov has appeared more than fifty times as soloist with the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Pacific Music Festival Orchestra, and has collaborated with Bernard Haitink, Nicholas McGegan, Edo de Waart, Ludovic Morlot, Ton Koopman, and Riccardo Muti, performing works by Mozart, Strauss, Marcello, Haydn, Martinů, Vivaldi, Carter, Hummel, Krommer, and Bach. He has recorded for Sony Classical, BMG, Boston Records, Elektra, and CSOResound, and was a featured soloist with the Chicago Symphony and John Williams on the Oscar-nominated recording for the film Lincoln. A prolific chamber musician, Mr. Izotov has performed regularly with the MET Chamber Ensemble, and with Yefim Bronfman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jamie Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, André Watts, and the Tokyo String Quartet.
One of today’s most active teachers, Mr. Izotov has served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, San Francisco Conservatory, DePaul University, and Pacific Music Festival. He regularly presents master classes at conservatories across the nation and abroad, such as Aspen, Oberlin, New World Symphony, Boston University, Manhattan School of Music, Vanderbilt, University of Michigan, Tanglewood, Verbier, Domaine Forget, and Interlochen, among others. He served as the oboe mentor for the 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra during its residency at the Sydney Opera House, which included a live internet simulcast to more than 30 million viewers worldwide.
Born in Moscow, Russia, Eugene Izotov studied at the Gnesin School of Music with Ivan Pushechnikov and Sergey Velikanov and at Boston University School of Fine Arts with Ralph Gomberg. For more information on Eugene Izotov, visit sfsymphony.org/eugeneizotov.
Recognized for her unique artistic curiosity in world-class performances spanning the music of Claudio Monteverdi and Johann Adolph Hasse through to György Ligeti and George Benjamin, American Lauren Snouffer is celebrated as one of the most versatile and respected sopranos on the international stage. A graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, she was a winner of a 2013 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation, a Richard F. Gold Career Grant bestowed by Houston Grand Opera, a grand finalist in the 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and was graduated from Rice University and The Juilliard School. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in the 2016 performances of Handel’s Messiah conducted by Patrick Dupré Quigley.
This season Ms. Snouffer assays the title role of Berg’s Lulu in a new production at the Teatro Municipal de Santiago and reprises her portrayal of Agnès in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin for Opera Philadelphia’s new production. Furthermore, she creates principal soprano roles in the world premieres of Houston Grand Opera’s The House Without A Christmas Tree, and in Andrew Norman’s A Trip to the Moon presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Equally celebrated in roles of the traditional opera canon, Ms. Snouffer returns to the stage of the Lyric Opera of Chicago in a new production of Orphée et Eurydice. Mozart heroines include Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Additional concert performances include Mozart’s Requiem with The Cleveland Orchestra and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. An impactful discography includes Hasse’s Siroe and Handel’s Ottone with George Petrou for Decca, Gottschalk’s Requiem for the Living with Vladimir Lande on Novona Records, Grantham’s La cancíon desesperada conducted by Craig Hella Johnson on Harmonia Mundi, and Feldman’s The Rothko Chapel with Steven Schick for ECM.
Jill Rachuy Brindel, who joined the SFS in 1980, studied at Indiana University and Chicago Musical College. She currently occupies the Gary & Kathleen Heidenreich Second Century Chair. She has served as assistant principal cello of the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra, principal cello of the Mendocino Music Festival, and as a member of the Navarro Quartet and the Houston Symphony. Ms. Brindel actively promotes the music of her late father, composer Bernard Brindel. She coaches the cello section of the SFS Youth Orchestra.
Harpsichordist Nicholas Pavkovic received a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in mathematics and a master’s degree in composition from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Elinor Armer. Mr. Pavkovic has scored more than two dozen narrative features and short films, and was named a Sundance Composers Lab fellow in 2008. In 2011, SFS Principal Viola Jonathan Vinocour and SFS Principal Keyboards Robin Sutherland premiered his Viola Rhapsody and Mr. Sutherland subsequently commissioned Volante (2012), a three-movement suite for clarinet and piano. Mr. Pavkovic currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory and is the Executive Director of the Ross McKee Foundation, a Bay Area nonprofit that promotes piano performance and education.
Mark Inouye, Principal Trumpet of the San Francisco Symphony and occupant of the William G. Irwin Charity Foundation Chair, attended UC Davis and graduated from the Juilliard School. He has held principal trumpet positions with the Houston and Charleston symphonies and has performed with the New York Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic. He has toured the US with the organ and trumpet duo Toccatas and Flourishes, and he was a member of the Empire Brass Quintet. His jazz album, The Trumpet & the Bull, includes his own compositions. For more on Mark Inouye, visit sfsymphony.org/markinouye.
Grammy award-winning bass vocalist Cameron Beauchamp is active throughout the country as a soloist, chamber musician, clinician, and experimental artist. Upcoming solo engagements include performances with the New York Philharmonic and BBC Symphony. Mr. Beauchamp is an original member of Roomful of Teeth, the Artistic Director of Austin-based Convergence, and was named best singer in the 2013-14 Austin Critics' Table Awards. He has been an artist-in-residence as performer and clinician at numerous universities and museums around the US including Stanford University, Yale University, Princeton University, the University of North Texas, Williams College, Harvard University, the University of Oregon, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. He has also been featured as a soloist with the Austin, Dallas, Seattle, New World, and Colorado symphonies. Mr. Beauchamp has recorded on Sony Classical, Harmonia Mundi, New Amsterdam Records, 4AD, Pro Organo, GIA, Edition Lilac, Klavier, and for PBS. An artist who pledges no allegiance to genre, he has collaborated with tUnE-yArDs, Kanye West, Holly Herndon, Sam Amidon, the Silk Road Ensemble, Justin Sherburn, Olga Bell, Tigran Hamasyan, Maynard Ferguson, Glenn Kotche, and Peter Sellars. He has performed on Grammy award-winning albums with Roomful of Teeth, Conspirare, and the Silk Road Ensemble; nine Grammy-nominated albums; and one Downbeat award-winning album. Mr. Beauchamp received his musical training at the University of North Texas, where he studied voice and jazz trombone. When he is not making music, he passionately lives his life as a husband and father in the Texas Hill Country, where he polishes his cowboy boots and dreams of a cure for type 1 diabetes.
Video Designer
Adam Larsen is a documentary filmmaker and designer for live performance. Designs for the San Francisco Symphony include Debussy’s Le martyre de Saint Sébastien, Peter Gynt, Peter Grimes, On the Town, Das klagende Lied, and most recently Michael Tilson Thomas’s Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. Mr. Larsen is also Resident Projection Designer for SoundBox. Other works include Hal Prince’s LoveMusik on Broadway; Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking The Waves at Opera Philadelphia and Prototype; Lee Breuer’s The Gospel at Colonus at the Athens, Edinburgh, and Spoleto festivals; Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at the Singapore and Edinburgh festivals; Saariaho’s Maa with Atlanta Symphony; Janáček’s From the House of the Dead at Canadian Opera; The Pelleas Project at the Cincinnati Symphony; Dove’s Siren Song, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann at Hawaii Opera Theatre; John Adams’s A Flowering Tree and Handel’s Agrippina at Opera Omaha; Handel’s Semele with Pacific Musicworks; John Cage’s Second Hand and Foss’s Phorion with New World Symphony; Dove’s Flight at Juilliard; Yoon’s Sunken Cathedral at Prototype; and Mascagni’s Iris at Bard Summerscape. Mr. Larsen’s documentary about autism entitled Neurotypical aired on the PBS series POV.
Lighting Designer
Luke Kritzeck has worked with artists from diverse disciplines and backgrounds in theater, dance, music, circus, and opera on stages around the world. Prior to joining New World Symphony as the Director of Lighting in 2014, Mr. Kritzeck spent six years working for Cirque du Soleil on its touring production TOTEM and in Macau, China on its resident show ZAiA. His other projects with Cirque du Soleil include serving as the lighting director for featured performances, including the Venetian Macau Tennis Showdown and the International Indian Film Awards, which was broadcast to more than 350 million viewers. Mr. Kritzeck’s design credits include Chautauqua Opera Company, Cincinnati Ballet, Cedar Fair Entertainment, Opera Theatre and Music Festival of Lucca, Lafayette Ballet Theatre, and the San Francisco Symphony.