Artistic Leadership
Perry So
Music Director
Perry So is Music Director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. He also currently serves as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra (Navarre Symphony Orchestra). He served as Associate Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Conducting Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Artistic Collaborator of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, and on the conducting faculty of the Manhattan School of Music. As a student at Yale University he founded an orchestra and led the undergraduate opera company. He received his training as a conductor initially under James Sinclair and subsequently with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and received First and Special Prizes at the International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in St Petersburg, Russia.
Chelsea Tipton, II
Principal Pops Conductor
As a sought after guest conductor, Chelsea has appeared with numerous major orchestras in the U.S., including Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Houston, Atlanta, Indianapolis, New Jersey, Nashville, Hilton Head, and San Antonio, as well as the Brooklyn, Louisiana, and Rochester Philharmonics, and the Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana (Palermo) among others. During the summer of 2011 he was part of an extensive European tour with pop artist Sting that took him to 15 countries and to work with 19 different European orchestras. He prepared the orchestras for the concerts and performed with Sting in concert in the Canary Islands, Granada, and Cap Roig Spain. Chelsea recently conducted the Sphinx Competition Showcase gala concert at Carnegie Hall, which was the culmination of a ten city tour with that orchestra. He was a last minute replacement for Robert Spano to conduct an all-Gershwin season finale with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. The New York Times applauded Tipton for “leading sweeping and vibrant performances” of Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris.
