The Florida Orchestra has named rising star Chelsea Gallo as its new assistant conductor starting with the 2022-23 season in the fall. Gallo will lead TFO’s youth and community concerts, conduct select Raymond James Pops and Morning Coffee concerts and regularly assist Music Director Michael Francis and other conductors.
“We are excited to have Chelsea Gallo join The Florida Orchestra. She is a highly talented conductor, and I’m most impressed by her artistically inquisitive nature. She shares our passion for communicating in a fresh, relevant way that gives our community a deeper connection to the music. There is no doubt she will be a great asset to TFO and the Tampa Bay community,” Maestro Francis said.
In Gallo’s previous positions as assistant conductor of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, a conducting fellow with the Dallas Opera and as staff conductor with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, she regularly assisted some of the world’s most prominent conductors including Leonard Slatkin, James Gaffigan, Eun Sun Kim and Carlos Miguel Prieto. In addition to her role with TFO next season, Gallo will be a regular guest conductor with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.
“I could not be more thrilled to join The Florida Orchestra and work under the leadership of Michael Francis,” Gallo said. “I’m especially excited to be part of the orchestra’s innovative programming in the concert hall and in the community. It will be a pleasure to make music with these musicians in new ways that reflect and serve a growing Tampa Bay region that is so alive with arts and culture.”
Gallo brings a unique interest in combining her two loves: music and science. She has been part of recording and performing projects for NASA, Lockheed Martin, the National Institute of Aerospace and the European Space Agency. Recently, she was invited on behalf of the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of Michigan to partner on a project that encourages creativity within the hard sciences by drawing parallels between running a nuclear reactor and leading a symphony orchestra.
Gallo has described her conducting pursuits as “a devotion to sharing the relevancy and humanity within classical music.” She studied conducting in Vienna, Prague, and Banska Stiavnica with the late Maksimilijan Cencic and Leos Svarovsky. Gallo holds a doctorate of musical arts from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Helen Wu Graduate Fellowship in Conducting.
Outside the concert hall, Gallo reads and studies languages. She loves yoga, basketball, long-distance running, and hiking. She has a passion for baseball and played professional fast pitch for the Vienna Wanderers.