The Virginia Symphony Orchestra
About the VSO
Each year, the VSO strives to engage and educate a broad audience by performing for over 100,000 people throughout Hampton Roads and serving more than 45,000 people with our education and community engagement programs. Led by Grammy Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta, the VSO performs more than 150 concerts and 100 educational and community engagement activities per year. Now in its 98th season, the VSO has become a cultural cornerstone of Hampton Roads, committed to fostering a dynamic, accessible, and creative community.
JoAnn Falletta
Music Director
Ms. Falletta has enchanted audiences across the globe as a guest conductor for some of the finest symphony orchestras in the world – including over 100 orchestras across North America, as well as prominent orchestras in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.
“One of the finest conductors of her generation.”
– The New York Times
Gonzalo Farias
Assistant Conductor
An engaging orchestral conductor, award-winning pianist and passionate educator, Gonzalo Farias, has been recently appointed Assistant Conductor of the Virginia Symphony. Under the guidance of JoAnn Falletta, Farias’ ambition is to establish music-making as a way of rethinking our place in society by cultivating respect, trust, and cooperation among all people in our community.
He was the Associate Conductor of the Occasional Symphony in Baltimore and the recipient of the prestigious Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conducting Fellowship for the past two seasons. Out of 566 applicants and 78 countries, he was recently chosen as one of 24 finalists in the prestigious 2018 Malko Conducting Competition with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
Farias was born in Santiago de Chile, where he began his piano studies at age five. He earned his bachelor’s degree at the P.C. University of Chile, and then continued his graduate studies at the New England Conservatory as a full-scholarship student of Wha-Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman.
