Who is Paul Hess ?
Paul Hess was born in Wisconsin, USA, graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, with diplomas from the Salzburg « Mozarteum » and the « Academia Chigiana of Siena » in Italy.
Laureate of the Besançon Conducting Competition, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy and made his European Opera début at the Rome Opera conducting Don Giovanni, leading eighty performances at the Bern Opera from 1985-1986. He has conducted such singers as Jan Peerce, Thomas Moser, Luz del Alba Rubio, Mariana Nicolesco, Nicola Ulivieri, Bruno Pola, Winifred Faix-Brown, Janice Mancini del Sesto, Silvano Carroli, Bengt Rundren, Julia Conwell, Susan Larson, Joseph Shore, Adelina Scarabelli and many others. Invited with such great singers as Magda Olivero, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Lella Cuberli, and others, onto the jury of international opera and instrumental competitions, he promotes talented young musicians.
Interested in pedagogical innovation, he realized the inimitable « Visual Music Show »: animated musical lectures with « live » drawings, piano and orchestra. He is co-founder and President of Piccolo Opera, a school directly initiating children and adults into all aspects of the opera world: voice, dance, theatre, fencing, conducting, and performance.
Music Director of La Compagnie Lyrique de Genève he has led such orchestras as L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Basler Radio-Sinfonieorchester, Buffalo Philharmonic, Bologna Opera Orchestra, Filarmonia Veneta, San Remo Orchestra, and prepared concerts for, Arthur Fiedler, Lukas Foss, Anshel Brusilow, and Otto-Werner Müller at the New England Conservatory, Boston, enjoying the support of such conductors as Maurice Abravanel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Peter Maag, and Franco Ferrara.
An individual of multiple talents …
Conductor, composer, illustrator, pianist and lecturer …
Conductor :
Prize-Winner, Concours de Besançon 1981
Rome Opera, 1984, « Don Giovanni »
Bern Opera, 1985/1986, 80 performances
Concerts : U. S. A., Italy, Switzerland, France,
Austria, Hungary, etc…
Illustrator :
Drawings published in diverse music magazines, such as :
Il Mondo della Musica (Rome), Clavier (U. S. A.), Belgium, …
Exhibitions : Rome Opera (100 drawings) – 2001
Victoria Hall, Geneva 1988 and 2001
B.F.M. – Geneva – 2000
Radio Suisse Romande, Lausanne – 1990
Télévision Suisse Romande, Geneva – 1990
G.A.T.T., Geneva, 1989, etc…
Lectures :
Teatro Comunale di Bologna – 2003, 2005
Cercle Richard Wagner, Geneva – 1992, 2003
Conservatoire de Lausanne – 1993
Radio Suisse Romande, Geneva – 1990