Hugo Valverde

Hugo Valverde carries a professional orchestral and solo career in the United States and his native Costa Rica as a French horn player, currently holding the position of Acting Third Horn with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. As an orchestral player he has performed with the Costa Rican National Symphony Orchestra, the Classical Tahoe Festival Orchestra, the Strings Music Festival Brass Ensemble, the Orchestra of the Americas, the Pacific Music Festival, the New York City Ballet, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. As soloist he has performed Richard Strauss’s Concerto No. 1 with the Lynn Philharmonia Orchestra under Guillermo Figueroa, and he premiered Marvin Camacho’s Tributo al Ciudadano Pablo with the Heredia Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica under Josué Jiménez. He has also premiered pieces by Manuel Matarrita and other Latin American composers. He often performs chamber music with his colleagues of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at the Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall and with the woodwind quintet Quinteto de Luz in Costa Rica. A dedicated educator, he has been involved in pedagogical programs in the United States and Latin America, and is currently on faculty at the Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Precollege Division at Manhattan School of Music. Valverde studied at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Lynn University Conservatory of Music, and the National Music Institute in San José, Costa Rica. His main teachers are Daniel León, Luis Murillo, Gregory Miller, and William VerMeulen.