Maximiano Valdés is Music Director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Casals Festival. His previous posts include Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi, Principal Guest Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Chief Conductor of the Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile, and Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias. Since winning two international competitions in Copenhagen and Florence, Maestro Valdés has made a highly successful career, spanning Europe, the United States, Asia and Latin America.
He has performed in the concert halls of Venice, Bologna , Rome, Florence and Catania, as well as the Paris, Nice and Lyon operas. Valdés has directed at the Berlin and Bonn operas in Germany, and the Dresden, Cologne and Bochum orchestras. In England, he has conducted concerts and recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
In North America, Maestro Valdés has guest conducted in Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal among other cities. He is also a frequent guest in many South American venues such as the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Teatro Muncipal in Santiago, and Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte in Brazil. He travels to Havana in January 2016 to conduct the Orquesta National de Cuba.
His collaboration with the National System of Youth Orchestras of Venezuela dates from the outset of both his career and the program, and he has conducted numerous concerts and recordings with the Simón Bolívar Orchestra. Valdés studied piano and composition at the Accademia in Santa Cecilia in Rome, and went on to study conducting with Franco Ferrara and Sergiu Celibidache, also participating as conducting fellow at the Tanglewood Festival, and working with Leonard Bernstein.
photo Manuel Velez