BEN BOLT-MARTIN
2023 Guest Conductor
Ben Bolt-Martin is pleased and excited to join London Youth Symphony this evening as a guest conductor. Ben is past conductor of the Waterloo Chamber Players, Mississauga Youth Orchestra, Stratford Perth Youth Orchestra and Georgian Bay Symphony Youth Orchestra.
As a cellist, Ben Bolt-Martin has performed 20 seasons with the Stratford Festival of Canada, performing live and recording incidental music. He is a founding member of INNERchamber, an inventive and intimate chamber music series in Stratford. Ben has also featured as a soloist across Canada with a special interest in new music reflecting humanity's search for meaning. Ben was the featured performer on the Juno nominated recording Notes Towards.
As an arranger, Ben's projects have twice been nominated for Canadian Folk Music Awards and are regularly performed in orchestras across Canada.
Ben teaches chamber music at University of Waterloo.
LEN INGRAO
Conductor and Artistic Director Emeritus
Len Ingrao is the Artistic Director Emeritus of the London Community Orchestra and the London Youth Symphony.
He began studying conducting with Charles Zachary Bornstein in London Ontario and became Assistant Conductor of the London Mozart Festival (1985). Subsequent training was with Karl Österreicher (Vienna, as auditor), John Barnum (Toronto), and Gustav Meier (Windsor, Kitchener, and London OFSO Workshops). He was Assistant Conductor of the UWO Symphony Orchestra (1990-94) under Prof. Jerome Summers and Assistant Conductor with UWOPERA (1991-1999) under Prof. Jim McKay. He was Assistant Conductor to Stan Kopec for the London Youth Symphony (1997 to 2002) and the Niagara Youth Symphony (1997 to 2000.) With that ensemble, he recorded Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture on CD and conducted them during their 1998 European Tour of Holland, Germany, Belgium, and France.
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He has been Guest Conductor with the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra London Canada, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the Woodstock Strings. In June-July of 2002, he led the London Youth Symphony on its tour of Austria and Italy. On Remembrance Day 2006, he conducted LYS during a performance of Elgar's Violoncello Concerto at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, the first time a symphony orchestra had performed at that venue. He was also Principal Conductor of the Waterloo Chamber Players from 2002 to 2009, and Conductor of the UWO Chamber Orchestra in 2007 and 2008.
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Len directed the orchestra for the final time in November 2022, and now serves in an advisory capacity.