Maestro | YPSO | Adolphus Hailstork | Jennifer Higdon | Back to Table of Contents

David Ramadanoff has been Music Director/Conductor since 1989. Under his leadership, YPSO has grown to a membership upwards of 100 young players from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and has gained wide recognition as an outstanding youth ensemble.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Ramadanoff began his professional studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Temple University. He was a doctoral candidate at The Juilliard School where he also taught conducting until Seiji Ozawa offered him the position of Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.

Mr. Ramadanoff worked closely with Robert Page, William Smith, Herbert Blomstedt, Otto Werner Mueller, Seiji Ozawa, Eugen Jochum, Leonard Bernstein, and Gunther Schuller, and attended both Aspen and Tanglewood. He performed regularly on the San Francisco Symphony subscription concert series, continuing as Associate Conductor under Edo de Waart.

As Music Director, he developed and strengthened the Symphony’s educational programs and community concerts.

In 1980, Mr. Ramadanoff won the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award, and in 1982 made his Carnegie Hall debut with the American Symphony. He served as Director of Orchestral Activities at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1984 to 1988 as well as Principal Conductor of the SFCM Orchestra. Mr. Ramadanoff has been guest conductor for performances with the Kansas City Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Napa Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, and Fort Collins (Colorado) Symphony. 

In addition to YPSO, Mr. Ramadanoff is Music Director/Conductor of the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra and the Conductor of the California Sound Collective. Mr. Ramadanoff also served as the Music Director/Conductor of the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 2015.

Maestro | YPSO | Adolphus Hailstork | Jennifer Higdon | Back to Table of Contents

Celebrating its 85th season in 2021-22, Young People’s Symphony Orchestra is the oldest youth orchestra in California and the first independent youth orchestra in the nation. Founded in Berkeley in 1936, YPSO has developed the musical talents and skills of thousands of students in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today we are the top regional youth orchestra located in the East Bay and serve musicians who live in 31 cities in seven counties including Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma. Many YPSO alumni are internationally distinguished musicians and prominent community members.

Our mission is to guide young musicians, ages 11-21, to achieve excellence within an orchestral setting. We provide an educational environment that fosters accomplishment, serves as a cultural resource for the community, and builds future audience by instilling a passion for music. We encourage young people to become exemplary musicians, and young musicians to become exemplary people.

In his 33nd season with the orchestra, Music Director/Conductor David Ramadanoff leads a team of master teachers who provide specialized sectional coaching each week, addressing technical and musical issues unique to their instruments. Student applicants audition for placement into YPSO in Spring and Summer for the following season.

Maestro | YPSO | Adolphus Hailstork | Jennifer Higdon | Back to Table of Contents

About our Contemporary Composers

Adolphus Hailstork received his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University, where he was a student of H. Owen Reed.  He had previously studied at the Manhattan School of Music, under Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond, at the American Institute at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger, and at Howard University with Mark Fax.

Dr. Hailstork has written numerous works for chorus, solo voice, piano, organ, various chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and opera.

Significant performances by major orchestras (Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York) have been led by leading conductors such as James de Priest, Paul Freeman, Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maezel, Jo Ann Falletta and David Lockington. This March, Thomas Wilkins conducted Hailstork’s AN AMERICAN PORT OF CALL with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Hailstork’s newest works include THE WORLD CALLED (based on Rita Dove’s poem TESTIMONIAL), a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra commissioned by the Oratorio Society of Virginia (premiered in May 2018) and STILL HOLDING ON (February 2019) an orchestra work commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is currently working on his Fourth Symphony, and A KNEE ON A NECK (tribute to George Floyd) for chorus and orchestra.

Dr. Hailstork resides in Virginia Beach Virginia, and is Professor of Music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.   

Visit  www.adolphushailstork.com  

Maestro | YPSO | Adolphus Hailstork | Jennifer Higdon | Back to Table of Contents

Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed figures in contemporary classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto and, most recently, a 2020 Grammy for her Harp Concerto. In 2018, Higdon received the prestigious Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is awarded to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is today’s most performed contemporary orchestral work, with more than 650 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than sixty CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for 2 Grammy awards.

Her works have been recorded on over 70 CDs. Higdon has won three Grammys in her career for Best Contemporary Classical Composition: first for her Percussion Concerto in 2010, in 2018 for her Viola Concerto and in 2020 for her Harp Concerto .

Dr. Higdon received a Bachelor's Degree in Music from Bowling Green State University, an Artist Diploma from The Curtis Institute of Music, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Hartt School and Bowling Green State University.

For more information, visit www.jenniferhigdon.com

Maestro | YPSO | Adolphus Hailstork | Jennifer Higdon | Back to Table of Contents