LACO Reveals New Cohort Of Diverse Fellows Selected For its Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) has announced four top-tier early-career musicians have been selected for its Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship, a prestigious program sponsored by LACO in partnership with the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (ICYOLA) that engages members of historically underrepresented groups in western classical music ensembles. The 2023-2025 cohort of Fellows, including two wind players and two string players, are:

• Flutist Alejandro Lombo, from Miramar, Florida, who earned a Master's degree from The Juilliard School and a Bachelor's degree from the Curtis Institute of Music;
• Oboist Eder Rivera, a Honduran-native who graduated with honors from Columbus State University's Schwob School of Music and received a master's degree from the Colburn Conservatory;
• Columbian-American violist Nicolas Valencia, who holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of North Texas and is currently pursuing a Master's in Viola Performance at the University of Southern California;
• Double bassist Matthew Peralta, a New York-native who completed his undergraduate degree at Purchase College and earned a Master's degree from the Yale School of Music.

Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship, a rigorous two-year training program, offers a range of practical, in-the-field experience designed to increase the diversity of American orchestras, by providing the Fellows with critical professional development opportunities as well as work for hire, enabling them to perform in a professional setting alongside LACO's leading professional musicians. Established in 2017, the LA Orchestra Fellowship was developed to address the fact that less than 5% of America's orchestra workforce is African American, Hispanic or Native American, according to a recent report on diversity issued by the League of American Orchestras. 

 

“The Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship is the key component of LACO's educational mission to help foster diversity in the classical music industry,” says LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader. “Having quality real-world experience with a professional orchestra can make a critical difference in a musician's career path. Alejandro Lombo, Matthew Peralta, Eder Rivera, and Nicolas Valencia are all top-notch musicians at the beginning of promising careers. We want to help ensure they have the tools needed to be successful in their endeavors.”  

 

The Fellowship includes several weeks of work with LACO consisting of orchestral rehearsals and performances, chamber music coaching and concerts, a recital, mock auditions, and teaching artist opportunities through LACO's Meet the Music initiatives and with ICYOLA.

 

Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship also provides unprecedented support to prepare participants to win auditions in professional American orchestras, including financial support for participating musicians to take auditions and accept work with other orchestras.

 

The Fellows receive an annual minimum guarantee of $5,500 in compensation. For those residing outside of LA County, LACO also provides travel and housing for the weeks in which they are in residence with LACO. 

 

Initial funding for the Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship was generously provided in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and AFM Local 47. LACO assumed full financial responsibility for the program's operating costs in fall 2023.

 

For information about LACO and the Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship, please visit www.laco.org or call 213 221 3920. 

 

ABOUT THE 2023-2025 LOS ANGELES ORCHESTRA FELLOWS
 

Alejandro Lombo (flute), from Miramar, Florida, is the principal flutist of Symphony in C and regularly performs with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Princeton Symphony, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and New World Symphony. In 2023 Lombo performed with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center and attended the Music Academy of the West, where he won the Keston Music Academy Exchange audition and will subsequently work and perform with the London Symphony Orchestra. In previous summers he attended the Aspen Music Festival as a Conducting Academy flute Fellow and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra for three consecutive summers, with whom he toured the US, Asia and Europe under the batons of David Robertson, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, and Valery Gergiev. He has also performed throughout Europe and the U.S. with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä. In 2019, Lombo toured Israel with a woodwind quintet made up of fellow students and faculty from Curtis Institute of Music as part of a cultural exchange project working with young Arab and Israeli musicians. He won the 2023 Sphinx Orchestral Partners Audition Competition, the 2019 Yamaha Young Performing Artist Competition, the 2019 Flute Society of Greater Philadelphia Young Artist Competition, and the 2021 Aspen Music Festival Concerto Competition. He was awarded the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship for his Master's degree at The Juilliard School and graduated with a Bachelor's degree from Curtis under the tutelage of Jeffrey Khaner, where he received the Walter-Goldberg Fellowship.

Matthew Peralta (double bass) is a second-year Fellow at the New World Symphony, specializing in double bass. He has recently performed with esteemed ensembles such as the Seattle Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, where he served as a diversity fellow. Peralta received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Sphinx SOPA Excerpt Competition, as well as the Most Outstanding Instrumentalist award. During his senior year of high school, he was accepted into the New York Youth Symphony, with which he gave the first of many performances at Carnegie Hall. Peralta subsequently studied under Professor Timothy Cobb at Purchase College. In his senior year, he participated in the Double Stop Foundation competition and was chosen as a 2018 Ambassador for the Foundation. In addition to earning the title of Ambassador, Peralta brought home a significant prize - a Jacob Schmidbauer 3⁄4 double bass dating back to the late 1800s. He received a Master's degree from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with Professor Donald Palma. He has attended numerous music festivals, including Roundtop and the International Summer Academy in Vienna, where he studied with James VanDemark, Josef Niederhammer, and Jiri Hudec. Peralta currently plays a 2000 Kolstein Carcassi model double bass.

Eder Rivera (oboe) is a Colburn Artist with his chamber group Sonarsix and the co-founder of HOPE (Honduras Oboe Project Education Inc.). He earned a master's degree from the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles and is currently studying for an Artistic Diploma with Eugene Izotov, principal oboist of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Rivera recently made his debut with the Music Academy Symphony Orchestra in Santa Bárbara, the Artosphere Orchestra Festival, the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra, and the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. His numerous awards include Bronze Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and SOPA Sphinx Orchestra Excerpts competition, and First Place at the 2016 Texas Double Reed Society, the MTNA Georgia State Competition, and Southeast Regional Competition, and the 2018 Yamaha Young Performing Artists competition. Rivera received the Senior Performance Honors award in recognition of his undergraduate achievements at Columbus State University's Schwob School of Music, where he studied with Dr. Susan Tomkiewicz, graduating with honors. Rivera, who has performed on television in the U.S. and Honduras, is an engaging speaker who enjoys motivating young musicians and assisting oboe students with their artistic preparation in his native Honduras. In 2019, he was selected as a soloist with the Virtuosi String Ensemble directed by Sergiu Schwartz and has worked with conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Stéphan Denève, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ludovic Morlot, James Conlon, Yahuda Gilad, and Rosen Milanov, among others. Rivera began his musical studies at age 13 at the Victoriano López Music School in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Nicolas Valencia (viola) is a Colombian-American violist currently pursuing his Master's Degree in Viola Performance at the University of Southern California, where he studies with Professor Yura Lee, LACO's Principal Viola. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Viola Performance from the University of North Texas under the guidance of Dr. Susan Dubois and Cynthia Roberts. In addition to being selected as a recipient of the 2023 Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Fellowship, Valencia was selected for the inaugural viola position in the Thornton Virtuosi Chamber Ensemble. He was also named a finalist for the Keston Max Fellowship at the London Symphony Orchestra and is a substitute violist at the New World Symphony. Valencia has held principal viola positions in ensembles such as the Music Academy of the West, Thornton Symphony Orchestra, UNT Symphony Orchestra, the Fantasmi Ensemble, and the New Spain Baroque Orchestra. As a guest recitalist and soloist, Valencia has performed at numerous notable venues, including the Meyerson Symphony Center, the Colombian National Museum, the Sanctuary of Monserrate, the Colombian Consulate in Houston, Occidental College in Los Angeles, the Dallas Hall of State, and Oklahoma City University. He has also participated in concert tours of Germany; Austria; the Czech Republic; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Bogota, Colombia. Valencia enjoys teaching as well, and has had the opportunity to lead masterclasses at the National University of Colombia and the University of Puerto Rico. 

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