Get to know Valentina Paolucci

-


 

Get to know The Gena Branscombe Project’s 2026 Conductor scholarship winner, Valentina Paolucci! She is a rising orchestral conductor and violinist currently based in New York City.

 A recent graduate from the Juilliard School with a Masters Degree in Orchestral Conducting, she was awarded the Robert Craft-Igor Stravinsky Conducting Award upon graduation. Valentina is currently a Conducting Fellow with The Chelsea Symphony and Music Director of the NYO-USA Alumni Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.





(Valentina with her winner's coffee mug)


Valentina spent several weeks this summer at the Domaine Forget Académie internationale de musique et de danse in Saint-Irénée, Quebec being inspired with beautiful music making and learning from world renowned conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Kensho Watanabe. The culmination of her weeks of lessons and coachings was the honor of conducting the Orchestre Métropolitain in the final concert.  Completing her weeks in Canada, she quickly left for Romania where she participated in the George Enescu International Festival and Competition. At the Festival her conducting mentors Cristian Măcelaru and Marin Alsop offered inspiring advice and encouragement . For the final concert Valentina shared the stage with “amazing young musicians from all across Romania.”





Internationally, Valentina has conducted orchestras such as the Zhixing Symphony Orchestra (China), Brandenburger Symphoniker (Germany), Lüneburger Symphoniker (Germany), Orquesta de Cámara de Santiago (Chile), Athens Philharmonia Orchestra (Greece) along with orchestras in Finland, Bulgaria, and Panama.

 In the United States she has conducted orchestras such as the Richmond Symphony, Georgia Symphony Orchestra, Jackson Symphony, Adelphi Orchestra and Juilliard Orchestra. Valentina has assisted the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Sinfonietta, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Grand Rapids Symphony for conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Harding, Ruth Reinhardt, Ken-David Masur, Marin Alsop, Mei-Ann Chen, Tito Muñoz, Gemma New, and David Robertson.

Valentina is deeply committed to contemporary music and has collaborated with living composers such as David Lang, Augusta Reed Thomas, Jennifer Higdon, John Adams, Tania León and more.

Passionate about music education, she previously served as Assistant Conductor of the Greater Miami Youth Symphony and co-founded Through the Staff, 501(c)(3), a nonprofit organization providing free music lessons to underserved students.


#BringingBackBranscombe

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Research

-
Image
Research.....that daunting word when you are a student knowing you have a paper due or a presentation to give.  Hours spent in the library going through materials and old books.  Or, research could be a scientist spending countless hours, days and years creating experiments that hopefully will lead to a breakthrough in medicine.  As researchers we gather all we have read and learned in the hours of reading and experimenting to create a paper, presentation and an announcement that will change the world. Life experience is research, also.   With knowledge and facts you have accumulated over your time on this earth, you can put yourself in a setting, observe your surroundings, imagine a by-gone era then try to connect the dots of facts, scrutinize details and come up with an actual retelling of a happening.  That may sound weird, yet, it works. Recently my colleague and friend, Dr. Laurine Elkins Marlow, along with her husband, Bill, and I made a trip...
Read more

Kathleen Lockhart Manning

-
Image
Kathleen Lockhart Manning (1890-1951). Born in Hollywood, California, Kathleen was fortunate to study piano and composition with Moritz Moszkowski in Paris.   Also a singer, she performed with the Hammerstein Opera Company in London during the 1911-1912 season.   As a composer she wrote mainly vocal works for which she penned her own words.   Her song cycles include, “Sketches of New York,” “Sketches of London,”   “Sketches of Paris,” “Chinese Impressions,” and “Songs of Egypt.”   A number of her individual songs were arranged for chorus. After the death of Miss Lockhart Manning’s husband in 1938, mental illness haunted her the remainder of her life.   She died in Los Angeles.   I am not sure if Kathleen Lockhart Manning and Gena Branscombe actually knew each other but there is a reference to Gena in one of Kathleen’s diary entries.   She noted that she must send Miss Branscombe a copy of her newest published song cyc...
Read more

New Work Expo - National Opera Association - Boston, January 2026

-
Image
  National Opera Association’s 2026 conference in Boston included a New Work Expo. Exhibiting their operas, composers and librettists with posters, business cards and excerpts shared with attendees the personal story behind their operas whether from the historical viewpoint, to multisensory operas, humor, women’s issues and current political commentary. The creativity and passion for their operas was obvious. Now, as opera lovers we must help promote these musical works. Here are a few of the presentations: The Gena Branscombe Project’s Composer scholarship winner, Emily Clements and her librettist Bonita Blunt showcased their opera, “Letters to Lily.” Iranian composer, Niloufar Nourbakhsh and librettist Lisa Flanagan have created operas about the oppression of women in Iran. Composer Stephen Eddins comic opera, “Why I Live at the P.O.” based upon a Eudora Welty story has had several productions. I shared with Stephen that my father had been a Postal Inspector. And, how about an ...
Read more