American conductor Jerome Hoberman is praised by critics as an artist whose “sure authority [and] attention to rhythmic precision and dynamic shading produced excellent results.” Orchestras he has conducted include the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Shanghai Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra in China, the Muntenia Philharmonic in Romania, the Ukraine State Symphony in Kiev and, in the United States, the South Bend and Washington Idaho symphonies and Cincinnati’s Immanuel Opera, resulting in frequent re-invitations and offers of permanent posts. Festival appearances include the Shanghai Spring International Music Festival and the Baguio Cathedral International Music Festival (Philippines), which he inaugurated to remarkable acclaim in December 2008. During the 2009-10 season he debuts with the Manila Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
Jerome Hoberman has been Music Director and Conductor of The Hong Kong Bach Choir & Orchestra since 1992. He created the Bach Orchestra in 1995 as a fully-professional partner of The Bach Choir. His previous music directorships include the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra and the Nittany Valley Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania.
A strong advocate of new and unusual music, with an eclectic repertoire, Jerome Hoberman has given many significant first performances, introducing the music of the distinguished Polish composer Witold Lutosławski to the People’s Republic of China and of the eminent Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola to Kiev, leading the first Shanghai performance of Chen Pei-xun’s Ode to the Snow and Hong Kong premieres of works by Chadwick, Dallapiccola, Górecki, Harbison, Honegger, Janáček, Larsen, Orff, Pärt, Satie, Schnittke, Tavener, Tippett and Vaughan Williams, among others. In Shanghai he led the first performances of concertos for harpsichord and for double bass to be heard in that city, and in Hong Kong he has directed world premieres of music by numerous local composers. Hoberman’s performance with The Bach Choir and Orchestra of Tippett’s A Child of Our Time was Hong Kong’s principal commemoration of the Tippett centennial in 2005. In 2006 he gave the Hong Kong première of Honegger’s biblical oratorio Le Roi David and in 2009 the Hong Kong première of Hector Berlioz’s early Messe solennelle, each as part of the city’s annual Le French May cultural festival sponsored by the Consulate General of France.
The education of young musicians has central to Jerome Hoberman’s musical life. In recent years he has conducted the Hong Kong Youth Symphony, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of Hong Kong and the Wan Fang Youth Symphony, based at Shanghai Normal University. From 1992 to 2000 he was director of the Hong Kong Baptist University Orchestra (which he re-established after a hiatus of several years). Previously, he directed the University of Notre Dame Orchestra in the United States. He has also taught at the universities of Wisconsin and Hong Kong, established a Conductor Apprentice Program under the auspices of The Bach Choir, which has trained several talented young artists to take leading roles in the musical lives of Hong Kong and Macau, and maintains an active studio of private conducting pupils.
Born in New Jersey, Jerome Hoberman attended school in Manhattan. He holds degrees from Brandeis University, the University of Wisconsin and the Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a doctorate with a dissertation on the American composer Roger Sessions. He was a conducting fellow of the Aspen Music Festival, and studied additionally at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute, the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, Israel, L’accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy and the Netherlands Radio in Hilversum. His teachers include Sergiu Celibidache, Igor Markevitch, Jean Fournet and Georg Solti.
The Hong Kong Bach Choir 