Samuel Chung
Samuel Chung is a Korean-American conductor based in Los Angeles. He currently studies Orchestral Conducting at UCLA with Neal Stulberg and serves as Assistant Conductor of the Vicente Chamber Orchestra.
Chung has been on the faculty of the Montecito Music Festival as Orchestra Director. He has also assisted and prepared ensembles for conductors including Paul Phillips (Stanford University) and Larry Livingston (USC Thornton) and participated in masterclasses with Gerard Schwarz, Johannes Schlaefli, and others. In 2023, Chung was named Finalist of The Respighi Prize in Conducting, issued jointly by the Chamber Orchestra of New York and Comune di Bologna (Italy).
A passionate advocate of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Chung is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the Magari Ensemble, a nonprofit organization that presents interdisciplinary and purpose driven events across the country. With the Magari Ensemble, Chung has collaborated on interdisciplinary projects with organizations such as New England Conservatory’s Blind Glass Ensemble and Schönberg Center Vienna.
Chung holds a Bachelor’s degree from Boston University, where his primary teachers were Lucia Lin and Jeremy Yudkin.
Pablo Fernandez
Pablo Fernandez is a Cuban-born violinist and conductor based in Los Angeles. Currently, he is pursuing a bachelor of violin performance at Cal State Long Beach under Moni Simeonov. He studied conducting under Maxim Eshkenazy at the Colburn Community School of Performing Arts. He has also studied with Maestro Alan Mautner and Maestro Michael Stanley.
Born in Havana Cuba, he moved to the U.S. at the age of 5. His love for music started with watching Little Einsteins as a toddler. He started playing the violin at the age of 9 and quickly joined many ensembles.
He has played in many groups such as the CSULB Symphony Orchestra, LA Phil’s Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA), and many others. In 2023, he won the Burbank Philharmonic’s Discovery Conductor competition, where he had his conducting debut. He has also conducted student and teacher ensembles through YOLA.
Alongside his passion for performance, Pablo is committed to inspiring future generations of musicians. He hopes to ignite a love for music in children, fostering a new generation of artists who will continue the cycle.
Sophia Joó
Sophia Joó is a senior at Loyola Marymount University in the Honors Program, majoring in Music and Psychology.
She is the student conductor of LMU’s String Ensemble under Ken Aiso, where she also plays in the violin section. Sophie is also part of LMU Chamber Ensembles as pianist and violinist, and takes private piano lessons with Dr. Tania Fleischer. She has also performed in Del Rey Theater’s pit band and done film scoring as violinist.
This past summer, she was chosen as an Associate Conductor at the Conductor’s Institute of South Carolina, where she worked under Maestro Donald Portnoy. She was also selected as Fellow Conductor at the LA Conducting Workshop and Competition under Maestros Scott Weiss, Neil Thompson, and Nové Deypalan.
Born and raised in Minnesota to a Hungarian father and a Filipino mother, music played a large part of Sophie’s childhood. She started in piano and dance at age four, and continued on to learn violin, voice, and flute. She played violin with The Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony, Artaria Chamber Music School, and the Minnetonka High School Symphony, piano with MacPhail Center of Music, and sang in choir with the Music Association of Minnetonka and in her school’s musical theater program.
After college, Sophie plans to pursue further studies in orchestral conducting.