Symposium and performance highlight pioneering Black composer Sept. 27-28
Conducting Julia Perry’s music in (Re)Discovering
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Conductor News
Watch 3 Opera World Premieres for Free
Now available to stream digitally at no cost! Experience the future of opera with three all-new 20-minute works....
Opera is for All
Inaugurated as part of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ 2023 season, the New Works Collective is the company’s groundbreaking effort to bring new voices into the world of opera, as well as to connect new audience members with the art form by exploring characters and stories that embody the full spectrum of modern life. A completely fresh approach to commissioning new operas, this first-of-its-kind program upends the form’s traditional model in favor of empowering composers and librettists who may feel that they do not have a place in opera and giving members of the community the chance to see themselves in the stories being performed. It’s an approach that New Works Collective conductor Darwin Aquino feels is vital for keeping opera resonant in today’s society.
Sound Moves: Where Music Meets Chess
Celebrate the closing of the WCHOF's exhibition, Sound Moves: Where Music Meets Chess, with a unique performance using a custom-made chessboard piano at Saint Louis University's Sinquefield State Room on January 18, 2024, accompanied by musicians from the St. Louis...
Darwin conducts the 2024 New Works Collective at OTSL
Last winter, more than 130 artists applied to create new operas with OTSL. Ultimately, just three multi-genre teams were selected by a panel of St. Louis artists, advocates, and community leaders. Now, those three teams are about to prove just how innovative, inclusive, and fun opera can be…
Seduction, Deception, Madness!: Conducting Giselle
Chamber Music Society of Saint Louis, under the baton of Darwin Aquino, will accompany the dancers with the score composed by Adolphe Adam. The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch in 2019 called their playing “instrumental brilliance”. Many are members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Catch Darwin on Classic 107.3 FM
Kathy Lawton Brown of Classic 107.3 interviewed Music Director Darwin Aquino and Guest Conductor Leon Burke III. Part 2 of the interview has Maestro Aquino describing the program to be performed Sunday, July 16 at 7:30pm at the 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity in University City. All concerts are free to attend!
Two new concerts at the Interlochen Center for the Arts
Sunday, July 2, 2023 3:00pm, Corson Auditorium and Sunday, July 9, 2023 3:00pm, Corson Auditorium
Article with the St. Louis Magazine about Gateway Festival Orchestra
Get to know the two conductors behind this year’s Gateway Festival Orchestra summer concert series. The Gateway Festival Orchestra, a ‘cultural treasure’ that has become a staple to St. Louis summers…
Interview: STLPHIL premieres Jocelyn Hagen’s music
Darwin Aquino, the Music Director of the The Saint Louis Philharmonic and Leanne Magnusen Latuda, Artistic & Executive Director of the Saint Louis Women’s Chorale, spoke with Kathy Lawton Brown about their joint concert on April 28 that features music of Benjamin Britten, Maurice Ravel, and two St. Louis premieres: “Seis Sones Sencillos” by Carlos Fariñas and Antonio María Romeu and “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” by Jocelyn Hagen…
Darwin’s conducting debut with OTSL
Last year, Opera Theatre of St. Louis started an experiment. The first fruits of that experiment can be seen March 16-18 at COCA’s Catherine B. Berges Theatre. The creative team also includes conductor Darwin Aquino and choreographer Kirven Douthit-Boyd…
Darwin makes conducting debut with the Florida Grand Opera
Darwin has been invited to conduct the first opera of the FGO’s 2022/23 season: “El Matrimonio Secreto” by Italian composer Domenico Cimarosa, in a new Spanish translation by Darwin Aquino and Benedetta Orsi. But, everything happens with a new and very special Latino...