The Friday Morning Music Club Orchestra

Pablo Saelzer, Conductor

Pablo Saelzer is the Music Director and Conductor of the Friday Morning Music Club Orchestra (FMMCO) of Washington, DC in the United States. Saelzer made his first Washington, DC conducting appearance as guest conductor of the FMMCO at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in April of 2005. That concert was part of a two-year competitive selection process culminating in his appointment as the Orchestra's Music Director in October of the same year. The Washington Post described Saelzer's collaboration with the Orchestra in the following review from February of 2007: "Led by conductor Pablo Saelzer, Friday's performance was spirited in temperament, buoyed by energetic flourishes of sound that highlighted the music's tonal sweetness and busy contrapuntal textures. Saelzer was sensitively attuned to the many contrasting emotional inflections and rubato freedom of the music's rhythmic landscape."

In January 2008 Saelzer appeared as guest conductor and taught conducting at the "Music on the Mountains" Festival in Poços de Caldas in Brazil. In March he will conduct the Mississippi All-State Orchestra, and in July he is scheduled to conduct the Orquesta Clįsica in Santiago, Chile.

Saelzer made his conducting debut with the Symphony Orchestra of Concepción, Chile, at the International Orchestral Conducting Summer Academy in 1992. In 1995, he was invited to conduct at the summer festival of the Southeastern Music Center in Columbus, Georgia. In 1996, Saelzer was selected as Music Director and Conductor of the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra in Jackson, Mississippi. In 1999, he was asked to substitute as conductor on short notice at the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra (MSO). The success of this event let to further conducting engagements with the MSO including the MSO's Chamber Orchestra Series and a live broadcasted performance of the 20th Annual Pepsi-Pops Concert, which was attended by more than 7,000 people. In 2004, Saelzer conducted Mozart's The Magic Flute throughout the state of Mississippi as the guest Music Director of the Southern Opera and Music Theatre. As Assistant Conductor of the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) Symphony Orchestra in Hattiesburg, he premiered a number of works and had the honor of collaborating with such distinguished musicians as Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Jean-Pierre Rampal, and Ray Charles, among others. During Saelzer's time in Mississippi, Mississippi Public Radio broadcast many of his performances.

Throughout his career, Saelzer has been active in music education as well as in orchestral and chamber music performance. In Chile, he served on the faculty of the Music Conservatory of the Universidad Austral in Valdivia, where he taught violin and viola. In the U.S., he was appointed Artistic Director and Conductor of the Mississippi Youth Symphony Orchestra program and taught chamber music and conducting at USM. Currently, he is a faculty member at The Levine School of Music and conductor of the Sinfonia of the Maryland Classical Youth Orchestras. As a performer, he plays with diverse professional ensembles in the DC/Baltimore area including the Concert Artists of Baltimore and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

Pablo Saelzer studied at the Music Conservatory in his native Valdivia, Chile and later at the Kantorei St. Martini in Bremen, Germany. He graduated with a Bachelor of Music from the Universidad Austral de Chile. He was then awarded a full scholarship to the United States to attend Columbus State University in Georgia, where he received a Master of Music degree in Conducting. As a student of orchestral conducting, Saelzer has been profoundly influenced by his work with the Argentine Guillermo Scarabino at the Summer Conducting Academy in Concepción, Chile, with George Del Gobbo in Columbus, Georgia, and with Kenneth Kiesler at the Conductors Retreat in Medomak, Maine.