Biography

Conductor

Perry So was born in Hong Kong in 1982. He graduated from Yale University and received his formal training as a conductor under Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In 2008 he received first and special prizes at the Fifth International Prokofiev Conducting Competition in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He has subsequently held posts as assistant, then associate conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, conducting fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, artistic collaborator of the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias in Spain, and he is a member of the conducting faculty at the Manhattan School of Music.

Highlights of recent seasons include his debut with the San Francisco Symphony in 2020, his European operatic debut at the Royal Danish Opera, his North American operatic debut at Yale, a tour to Milan with the Nuremberg Symphony, and a seven-week tour of South Africa with three orchestras including Verdi’s Requiem in Cape Town, broadcast in July 2020 as the centerpiece of the South African National Arts Festival. Other debuts in recent years include appearances with the Cleveland and Minnesota orchestras, and the New Jersey, Houston, and Detroit symphonies in the US; the London, Seoul, and China philharmonics; and the Residentie Orkest in the Hague.

He has recorded with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and his album of Samuel Barber’s and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's violin concertos with soloist Alexander Gilman and the Cape Town Philharmonic was awarded the Diapason d’Or in January 2012.

Mr. So, his wife Anna, and daughter Caroline divide their time between Boston and Saint Paul.

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