Pablo Urbina, new music director of Orquestra do Algarve. 

The Spanish maestro Pablo Urbina has been chosen as the new chief conductor of the Orquestra do Algarve, based in the Portuguese town of Faro.

‘I am very grateful that a Portuguese orchestra has chosen a Spanish conductor to strengthen the ties that unite both countries’, said Pablo Urbina.

‘I am very happy to begin this new professional stage with the Orquestra do Algarve, an orchestra that has shown me special affection from the first moment we worked together, at the end of 2023. Portugal is a country where I feel at home and where I believe I can develop the work I would like to carry out as a musician and conductor: to bring classical music to all audiences and really be able to change and improve society, bar by bar’, he said.

Urbina’s first concert as chief conductor of the Orquestra do Algarve will take place on 31 January with a programme featuring works by English composers Ruth Gipps (Cringlemire Garden) and Malcolm Arnold (Variations on a theme by Ruth Gipps and Serenade for Small Ochestra), as well as Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 93.

After his concert last Saturday at the Festival Internacional de Música de Granada conducting, with the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, the soundtrack of the film Blancanieves, by Pablo Berger, Urbina will return this season to conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de Navarra, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and Orquestra Sem Fronteiras and will make his debut with the Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras, among other projects.

Pablo Urbina is also Principal Conductor of the Vitae Orchestra of London and was awarded 3rd Prize in the Siemens Hallé 2023 International Conducting Competition.

You can read, in spanish, the full Platea Magazine article HERE.

Pablo Urbina, Orquestra do Algarve