Anthony
Quartuccio, a conductor equally comfortable in
the concert hall and the opera house, conducts
at Opera San Jose, is assistant conductor of the
San Jose Chamber Orchestra, and is music
director of the Gavilan College/South Valley
Symphony in Silicon Valley. Quartuccio is also
founding music director of the Bay Shore Lyric
Opera in Capitola, where he conducted critically
acclaimed productions including La Boheme,
Rigoletto, Le Nozze di Figaro,
La Traviata, and Die
Fledermaus. Recently, Mr.
Quartuccio’s talents as an opera conductor have
become recognized nationally. After a
performance of Il Trovatore, Opera News
wrote: “The
orchestra managed a suitably grand effect, with
conductor Anthony Quartuccio bringing out
leggiero nuances, lyrical phrasings and vivid
colors of Verdi's score, while also building up
thrilling climaxes that never overwhelmed the
vocal lines.”
At Opera San
Jose, he has led performances of Falstaff, La
Cenerentola, Tosca, The Flying Dutchman, Carmen,
Don Giovanni, Don Pasquale, Cavalleria Rusticana,
and Pagliacci. He has also conducted
the Santa Clara Chorale, the Nova Vista
Symphony, the Winchester Orchestra of San Jose,
The Japanese Choral Federations of Northern and
Southern California, and served as
assistant/rehearsal conductor for Vladimir
Spivakov and the Monterey Symphony Orchestra.
Quartuccio
is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music
in Philadelphia, where he obtained a fellowship
to study conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller,
director of orchestral studies at Curtis and the
Julliard School, and was awarded a personal
career grant from David Packard, benefactor of
the Packard Foundation, for advanced conducting
studies. While at Curtis, he served as an
assistant to eminent conductor of the
Metropolitan Opera and Cincinnati Symphony Max
Rudolf and completed studies in conducting,
piano and music theory. As a member of the
Curtis conducting department, he actively
participated in frequent master classes and
seminars with some of the world’s leading
conductors, including Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti,
Andre Previn, Kurt Masur and David Zinman. Gary
Graffman, the Institute’s president, describes
Quartuccio as “Gifted and serious with the
highest standards of excellence, both musically
and personally.” After receiving an
invitation from Gunther Schuller to study at the
1987 Festival at Sandpoint, Mr. Quartuccio, the
youngest member of the conducting class, made
his professional conducting debut at age
twenty-two leading the Spokane Symphony
Orchestra in a highly praised performance of
Copland’s El Salon Mexico. Soon
after he was appointed as assistant conductor of
the award winning San Francisco Symphony Youth
Orchestra, an apprentice position created for
him, and later accompanied the orchestra on a
highly praised tour of Asia in 1989. Subsequent
training in conducting includes studies at the
International Workshop for Conductors in the
Czech Republic with the Bohuslav Martinu
Philharmonic, advanced classes with the Czech
Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, and classes at
the Tanglewood Music Center.
In
2006 Mr. Quartuccio received as a lifetime
achievement award in the Arts from the Italian
American Heritage Foundation in addition to an
honorary doctorate degree on behalf the college
Arts at Santa Clara University.
A
native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Quartuccio
is the first and only conductor to received a
Bachelor of Music Degree Cum Laude from
Santa Clara University, and was awarded that
university’s highest artistic honor, the
Performer’s Certificate of Excellence in 1987.
He also served as assistant conductor to the
university’s symphony orchestra and has taught
conducting and music theory as a member of Santa
Clara University’s music faculty. Mr. Quartuccio
has a strong commitment to the musical growth of
the Bay Area, and conducts numerous local
concerts and concerto competitions, some of
which have been appeared on public television,
for the California Professional Music Teachers’
Association.
As an
instrumentalist, Mr. Quartuccio possesses a
diverse background, including early studies in
trumpet, piano, accordion and violin. He has
made numerous appearances around the country,
including some with the San Jose Chamber
Orchestra, the Cabrillo Music Festival
Orchestra, the Curtis Institute Symphony
Orchestra, The Santa Cruz Symphony, The Brevard
Music Festival Orchestra, and the San Francisco
Symphony.
