Grammy Award-winning conductor and Shepherd School alumnus Cristian Măcelaru '06, '08 will take the baton at the Feb. 29 performance by Rice University's Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra.
The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m. in Alice Pratt Brown Hall's Stude Concert Hall. Music director for the orchestra is Larry Rachleff, the Walter Kris Hubert Professor of Orchestral Conducting.
The program will open with Dvořák's "Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104," featuring soloist Lukas Goodman and conductor Joshua Hong, followed by Barber's "Second Essay for Orchestra, Op. 17" and Britten's "Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20." Goodman is an undergraduate student studying with Desmond Hoebig, professor of cello.
Măcelaru won a Grammy for Best Classical Instrumental Solo this year for his direction of "Marsalis: Violin Concerto; Fiddle Dance Suite," performed by Nicola Benedetti. He also recently conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Romania in its first U.S. tour.
Măcelaru studied violin with the late Shepherd School violin professor Sergiu Luca and received a master's degree in 2006. He completed a master's in orchestral conducting in 2008 with Rachleff. He is music director of the Orchestre National de France, was named the inaugural artistic director and principal conductor of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen Center for the Arts and is music director and conductor at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.
The performance is free and open to the public; no tickets are required. For more information on the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra, visit https://music.rice.edu/orchestra.
More information about Măcelaru is available online at http://macelaru.com.