The Los Angeles Orchestra Fellowship is the West Coast’s first comprehensive orchestral fellowship program to prepare top-tier emerging professionals from historically underrepresented communities to take and win auditions with American Orchestras.
In 2016, the League of American Orchestras issued a report indicating that while African-Americans and Latinos each make up approximately 13% of the American population, persons from those communities represent only 1.8% and 2.5% of the American orchestra workforce respectively. The report also indicated that persons from these communities do not perform well in auditions with American Orchestras, and that this factor contributed to the dearth of persons from these communities in American orchestras. Thus, our Fellowship Program is specifically designed to improve the performance of persons from those communities in American orchestra auditions, and to thereby increase the number of persons from these communities in American orchestras.
Two members of our first cohort of four have won auditions with American Orchestras as regular substitutes, and one has won an audition as a regular member of an American orchestra. We operate this three-year in-residence program in collaboration with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and through generous funding provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Our 2024-2025 Los Angeles Orchestra Fellows:
Alejandro Lombo – Flutist
Matthew Peralta – Double Bassist
Eder Rivera – Oboist
Nicolas Valencia – Violist