A Latin American Escapade with Rafael Payare ^2024-2025

Distinguished by innate musicianship, a gift for communication, and an irresistibly joyous spirit, conductor Rafael Payare began playing horn in Venezuela’s El Sistema program at age 14 and started his formal conducting studies in 2004 with José Antonio Abreu. Since winning Denmark’s prestigious Malko Competition for Young Conductors in 2012, his career has advanced rapidly. He was Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra from 2014 to 2019; has served as Principal Conductor of the Castleton Festival, founded by his mentor the late Lorin Maazel, since 2015; became Music Director of the San Diego Symphony in 2019, and three years later became Music Director of Canada’s Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. In recent years, Payare has conducted many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including those of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Zurich, Berlin, Vienna, London, Munich, Hamburg, and Paris, besides making important opera debuts at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; the Glyndebourne Festival; Stockholm’s Royal Swedish Opera; and the Royal Danish Opera.

Principal Trumpet with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal since 1995, Paul Merkelo has been featured frequently as a soloist with the OSM, notably on tours to South America and at the Lincoln Center in New York. He has been also been featured with orchestras worldwide, including the English Chamber Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, Venice Baroque Orchestra and Eastman Wind Ensemble. Merkelo’s first solo recording, A Simple Song was ranked Number One on Quebec’s classical records chart in 2000. In 2004, Analekta released his highly praised second CD, Baroque Transcriptions, which was nominated by the ADISQ in the category Best Classical Album of the Year. French Trumpet Concertos with the OSM and Kent Nagano was nominated for a JUNO Award in 2016. He is the founder of the Paul Merkelo Scholarship.  

Baritone Gustavo Castillo, who comes from Barquisimeto (Venezuela), owes the beginning of his musical education to El Sistema, a renowned music project in his home country. From 2016 to 2018 Castillo was a member of the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he started his stage career singing Peter in Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel and Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia for children. 

To his future projects belong his debut as Giorgio Germont in La Traviata at the New National Theater in Tokyo, his debut as Scarpia in Tosca at Hannover State Opera and he will also sing Amonasro in Aida at Teatro Coccia. In concert he sang Estevez Cantata Criolla with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra at the May Festival. Furthermore, he sang Ginastera’s Estancia with the Los Angeles Phil under Gustavo Dudamel and Carmina Burana at the Teatro Verdi in Salerno.