GRACE LIU ANDERSON
JESSICA RIVERO ALTARRIBA
Jessica Rivero Altarriba, a rising star of the conducting world, represents the next generation of aspirational orchestral leaders who are engaging new audiences and putting a fresh spin on old traditions. She will wrap up a yearlong collaboration with New Jersey Symphony as its first Colton Conducting Fellow when she departs in September to become assistant conductor of the Utah Symphony. New Jersey audiences will have one last chance to catch her in concert, Aug. 15 at The Victoria Theater at NJPAC in Newark.
“Classical Favorites: Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and More!” will sample popular orchestral works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Arturo Márquez that are included in the Symphony’s 2024–25 season, which opens on Oct. 6 with an NJPAC gala and concert featuring esteemed soprano Renée Fleming.
The wide-ranging, nature-themed season, the Symphony’s 102nd, was programmed by music director Xian Zhang and combines well-known repertoire with exciting new commissions.
Altarriba can’t think of a better send-off. “As a conductor, it’s a dream to perform this much music and to show such a big range of composers,” she says. “In some ways, it shows the strengths of how the Symphony programs the seasons with pieces that bring us closer to the music and have a lot of diversity and character. We’re trying to reach out to as many people as we can, so this combination of classical masterworks and some fun moments gives us a lot of balance.”
Tchaikovsky’s Polonaise from Eugene Onegin and selections from Stravinsky’s The Firebird share a common thread of storytelling. “In this Polonaise, Tchaikovsky was trying to put out all these personal details about his sexuality, and how to share that with the world,” Altarriba says. “And though Stravinsky was not going through the same thing, we can recognize that his ideas create something that sparks the imagination that always comes with the Russian composers.”
GRACE LIU ANDERSON
JESSICA RIVERO ALTARRIBA
Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet score (1910) takes its name from a Russian legend of a powerful and benevolent bird spirit with magical feathers. As in all good fairytales, there is a castle, a heroic prince, an evil sorcerer and a beautiful princess. It will be
performed at “The Firebird with Xian Zhang” concerts, March 7-9 in Newark and Red Bank. Jersey City’s Nimbus Dance will unveil new choreography set to the work in Newark only.
While writing Eugene Onegin, the 1879 opera based on Pushkin’s verse novel, Tchaikovsky courted a former student and married her to quell speculation that he was a homosexual. The disastrous marriage lasted two weeks and ended in his suicide attempt.
The opera’s energetic Polonaise accompanies a face-off between Onegin and a rival prince, marked by brilliant fanfares and a contrasting, melancholy cello theme. It will open the “Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Xian Zhang” concerts, April 3-6 in Newark and New Brunswick.
Schumann’s sparkling Overture, Scherzo and Finale (1841) shines a spotlight on the lesser-known German composer of the Romantic repertoire. “When we think of the great German composers, we have Beethoven and Mahler, but to some people,
Schumann doesn’t have the same level of success,” Altarriba says. “This is a piece that Schumann wrote when he was living in the best moment of his life, after he had composed his first symphony, so it’s a special piece that brings the idea of the symphony as a genre.”
Schumann intended the work — with its graceful overture, stormy scherzo and fugato-style finale — to be his second symphony, but it lacked a traditional slow movement, so he republished it as a sinfonietta. It will be heard at the “Vadim Gluzman Plays Brahms” concerts, March 20-23 in New Brunswick, Red Bank and Newark with guest conductor Lina González-Granados and violin soloist Gluzman.
Altarriba calls Debussy’s poetic Clair de lune, the third movement from his Suite bergamasque (1905), one of her favorites, “because Debussy as a composer can simplify life by the colors, which is the same feeling you get from Impressionism, so I think everyone who hears it will have a really sensory experience.”
Originally scored for piano, it will be played in André Caplet’s popular orchestral arrangement. It will open the “Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2” concerts, March 13-16 in Newark, Princeton and Morristown.
Altarriba is looking forward to Márquez’s lively Danzón No. 2 (1994), which is based on the traditional rhythms, forms and melodies of the danzón, an old salon dance from Cuba that became popular in Mexico and includes dynamic orchestral solos.
GRACE LIU ANDERSON
Jessica Rivero Altarriba conducts the New Jersey Symphony.
“I’ve always dreamed about conducting this piece because he’s a Mexican composer, and if you’re a Latin American conductor, you’re connected to the danzón,” she says. “As a Cuban, with the Spanish and French influences, it’s a dynamic that I can rhythmically understand well, which helps me better communicate it to the audience.”
It will be played at the “Paquito D’Rivera with New Jersey Symphony” concerts, Nov. 7-10 in Newark and Morristown, featuring guest artist and co-curator D’Rivera with his Quintet and guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto.
Márquez is the only living composer on the program; Altarriba connects to his story on a personal level. “Márquez was living his best life when he wrote this piece and he was finally starting to not feel so bad about being an immigrant in the United States,” she says. “The piece was also commissioned at the same moment he could finally have a piano, so there’s a sense of a great ending after a big struggle, and we can all understand what that feels like.”
Altarriba is on the cusp of 30 and in high demand, but her own artistic journey has had its ups and downs. At 18, while studying piano and flute at Esteban Salas Conservatory in Santiago de Cuba, she saw Cosette Justo Valdés conduct and vowed to become a maestra. She earned her conducting degree from Arts University in Havana in 2018 and, a year later, made the difficult decision to leave Cuba and pursue a career in Europe. She relocated to Spain, but the pandemic struck.
She found a guiding light and an advocate in Marin Alsop, a seasoned conductor and one of the first women to rise to success in the orchestral field.
Alsop’s Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship has supported emerging women conductors since 2003. Altarriba is among this year’s award recipients (she is also a Freeman Conducting Fellow with Chicago Sinfonietta) and is under Alsop’s mentorship while pursuing a master’s degree in conducting at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.
Her year as New Jersey Symphony’s Colton Conducting Fellow has been rewarding: She has worked alongside another groundbreaking conductor, Zhang, plus the orchestra’s artistic advisory committee and artistic staff. “In a way, you are like a learner because you have the chance to observe whatever the conductors or guest conductors are doing while you are covering and assisting them,” she says. “As a young conductor, you are always trying to learn from the more experienced ones.”
GRACE LIU ANDERSON
Jessica Rivero Altarriba takes a bow.
The 2023-24 season, the symphony’s 101st, explored the musical heritage of American orchestral works. Altarriba was the cover conductor for Zhang and guest conductors in case they could not appear due to illness or logistical issues. She also prepared the scores for each program, served as score reader for supertitles, gave pre-concert talks and took notes on sound balance for every rehearsal and performance.
She also assisted in the symphony’s community engagement programs with local schools, and conducted family and educational concerts in Morristown, Rahway and Newark. To better connect with the students, she used a multi-disciplinary approach that formed the basis of her musical training and education in Cuba.
“I think it’s super important to have ballet, theater, visual arts and music all tied together,” she says. “In the audience, you have a diverse group of people and sometimes you’re going to have someone who can barely identify with music, but they may resonate more with dance.”
Altarriba’s time with New Jersey Symphony, she says, “will always have a special place in my heart because it’s my first experience trying to discover the internal world of an orchestra — which is not only what piece you are conducting but the thousands of other things happening at the same time to make the concert happen — and these are things you have to learn by fire, by being put on the spot.
“This fellowship is phenomenal because you have a comfort and a safety zone to make mistakes. As a young conductor, you always have a lot of pressure about not failing because you worry you won’t be called on again. At New Jersey Symphony, the idea is more like, ‘It’s okay!’ There’s a supportive system in place. I feel extremely honored and privileged of the trust I received from the orchestra, because at the end of the day, the musicians are going to be the best teachers for a young conductor.”
The excellence-based fellowship program, created by philanthropists Judith and Stewart Colton, supports early-career conductors from populations that have been historically underrepresented on the podium. It was rolled out in 2023 as an expansion of the symphony’s existing Colton Fellowship for orchestral musicians, founded in 2019, which supports early-career orchestral musicians from Black and Latino communities.
“I appreciate that the Colton family can focus on this group of people that I am part of, and can find the light in minority communities that are underrepresented,” Altarriba says. “I feel that I have a call to keep encouraging people who look like me to pursue their dreams and to understand that there are people like the Colton family who are always going to give you their support. You just need to know that you can knock on that door.”
The 2024-25 recipient will be announced in the coming weeks, and Altarriba offers some parting wisdom to the incoming fellow: “Every single day you are going to be doing different things depending on which moment of the season you are in, so use every single day to learn as much as you can, be open to everything and don’t take any opportunity for granted.”
Though a mainstage concert wasn’t guaranteed as part of the fellowship, Altarriba made her symphony debut in four concerts, “Epic Scores of John Williams and More!,” May 30-June 2 in Newark, Red Bank and New Brunswick. While Zhang conducted the first half of the program, featuring guest pianist Min Kwon on Rachmaninoff, Altarriba conducted the second half of beloved movie themes from Williams’ scores.
She enters a new world in September with the Utah Symphony. She has already found common ground with Utahns and her Salt Lake City home base because she says it is a place that “really values and loves the arts and has a high sensitivity for it.”
It is an encouraging sign because at the audition, she didn’t see many faces that looked like hers, so she thought maybe she wasn’t the right person for the orchestra. “I took the audition as a chance to prove myself as a young conductor and didn’t think they’d even call me, but I also think there’s always something artistic beyond the way you look, and I remember it was just so easy to make music with them,” she says.
“At the end of the day, it’s not just about me being the conductor, but about the partnership and the collaboration process with the musicians, and connecting with people and touching someone’s life. If there’s a lack of collaboration and empathy in the world we’re living in, then art is the right vehicle to get there and to bridge that gap.”
For more on all New Jersey Symphony shows, visit njsymphony.org.
For more on Altarriba, visit jessicariveroaltarriba.com.
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