Final 2016 TMF Orchestra Series Concert to be Held This Saturday

The final 2016 TMF Orchestra Series concert is Sat., July 2 with Carl St. Clair conducting at the UH Moores Opera House, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15-$25.

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The conductor, Carl St. Clair, born in Hochheim, Texas (90 miles east of San Antonio; population 36 by the conductor's last count, whose names he can recite by heart), has experienced a career with an international trajectory.

Now in his 25st season as conductor and music director of the Orange County, CA-based Pacific Symphony Orchestra, he also has served as general music director and chief conductor of the German National Theater and Staatskapelle (GNTS) in Weimar, Germany, where he was the first non-European to hold this position.

St. Clair has also served as the general music director of the

Komische Oper Berlin. Conductor St. Clair, in March of 2011, amidst the political uprisings in the streets of Damascus, became the first American to lead the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra. (Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6.) Missak Baghbudarian, a former student of St. Clair's in Bulgaria, invited him to make the cultural diplomacy trip.

"It accentuated how music is an international language where people of different faiths commune on a different level. It erased demographic boundaries," said St. Clair.

This season, St. Clair celebrated his 26th season with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Orange County. In 2014, St. Clair was named Music Director of the National Symphony of Costa Rica.

The final 2016 TMF Orchestra Series concert is Sat., July 2 with Carl St. Clair conducting at the UH Moores Opera House, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15-$25.