François López-Ferrer and Wilbur Lin to join Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Conducting Staff

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO) announced today that two new staff conductors will join the CSO in September 2019. François López-Ferrer will be the new Assistant Conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and May Festival, and Wilbur Lin will be the new Assistant Conductor for the Cincinnati Pops and Conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra Philharmonic. They succeed Keitaro Harada and Gene Chang, whose successful tenures are completed this season.

François López-Ferrer, Assistant Conductor

François López-Ferrer will provide artistic support to CSO Music Director Louis Langrée and May Festival Principal Conductor Juanjo Mena as Assistant Conductor throughout all rehearsals and performances. He will also conduct the CSO Young Peoples Concerts which reach over 17,000 students and teachers. 

The Spanish-American conductor returns to Cincinnati with a formidable musical legacy; his father, the late Jesús López-Cobos, served as Music Director of the CSO from 1986 to 2001 and as Music Director Emeritus until his passing in 2018. His son, López-Ferrer, grew up in Cincinnati, attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), and maintains ties to the local music community. He founded Ensemble Vita, composed of fellow students from CCM, and led concerts throughout the Cincinnati area with innovative programming spanning Baroque through 21st-century repertoire. In 2012 he co-founded the Queen City Chamber Opera in Cincinnati, specializing in rarely performed operatic works created by well-known composers presented in non-traditional spaces.

López-Ferrer recently garnered international attention following a critically acclaimed debut with the Verbier Festival Orchestra, filling in for Iván Fischer and conducting alongside Sir Simon Rattle and Gabor Takács-Nagy at the 2018 Verbier Festival in Switzerland.

López-Ferrer is currently in his second season as associate conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Chile (OSNC). He also serves as principal conductor of the Ballet Nacional Chileno. With the OSNC, López-Ferrer conducted numerous subscription and educational concerts, as well as Coopeuch’s “Sembrando Cultura” tour, reaching approximately 30,000 people.

López-Ferrer holds a Master’s Degree in Orchestral Conducting from the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne, under the tutelage of professor Aurélien Azan Zielinski, and a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) where his teachers included Joel Hoffman, Miguel Roig-Francolí, and Michael Fiday. Since 2009 he has been a student and protégé of Conductor Leonid Grin. As a composer, López-Ferrer participated in master classes with Leonardo Balada, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski and Jack Body.

Wilbur Lin, Assistant Conductor

Wilbur Lin begain his tenure with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra as Assistant Conductor in 2019. He also serves as Conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO) Philharmonic, an ensemble of the region’s top high school age musicians. 

Lin began his musical education at the age of five. In 2008, the Taiwanese-American conductor founded a student orchestra, the Chamber Philharmonic Taipei, which is now a professional chamber orchestra with an active annual summer season funded by both the Arts Council of Taipei and the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture.

Briefly holding assistant conductor positions at Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Taiwan Symphony orchestras, he worked closely with conductors Andrew Manze and Fusao Kajima. Lin’s conducting engagements have taken him to prominent international stages including National Concert Hall of Taipei, Southbank Centre, Wigmore Hall, the British Museum, and Manchester’s BBC MediaCityUK studios, among others. Lin regularly works with Chamber Philharmonic Taipei and has conducted the Manchester Camerata, MAV Symphony Orchestra (Budapest), Taipei Philharmonic, Taiwan Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquestra de Cadaqués (Spain), Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Guiyang Symphony (China), Missouri Symphony, and Windsor Symphony (Canada) orchestras. As a pianist, Lin coached and performed with the Indianapolis Opera, IU Opera Theater, and Reimagining Opera for Kids, in addition to his freelance work as a vocal/opera coach and collaborator.

A recent graduate of Riccardo Muti's Italian Opera Academy, Lin's recent highlights include conducting Verdi’s Macbeth at Teatro Alighieri (Ravenna, Italy), Die Zauberflöte with the Winter Harbor Festival & Opera (Winter Harbor, Maine), an appearance with Canada's Windsor Symphony Orchestra, guest conducting El Salvador's National Youth Orchestra, and the conclusion of Chamber Philharmonic Taipei's seventh concert in its Bach Cantata Series.

Lin held the position of Lord Rhodes Scholar from 2013 to 2014, was a two-time recipient of Mortimer Furber Prize for Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), and is a doctoral candidate (ABD) at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.