"As the sounds of Beethoven's Symphony No.5 fill the rehearsal hall, conductor Jessica Bejarano stands at the podium, guiding her orchestra with passion and precision. "Let's make some music," she calls out, her baton slicing through the air, a symbol of leadership, determination, and representation. Bejarano is the founder and music director of the San Francisco Philharmonic, an orchestra she built with a vision of inclusion and accessibility."
""My mother was born in Tijuana, Mexico," she shares. "She had no inkling of music, no background in music. So what I did is I followed my brother's footsteps, and then from there, everything just kind of flourished into what it is today." It wasn't until college that Bejarano first experienced orchestral music. "My family was very shocked, very surprised," she says with a laugh. "They're like, where did this come from? And I was like, I don't know, I just love music.""
Jessica Bejarano conducts with visible passion and precision while emphasizing leadership and representation. Bejarano founded and directs the San Francisco Philharmonic to build an inclusive, accessible orchestral model. Bejarano is a first-generation Mexican American from Los Angeles who first encountered orchestral music in college. Bejarano embraces a nontraditional appearance, including piercings and tattoos, and uses that identity to challenge historical expectations about who belongs in concert halls. Bejarano created a blueprint for an inclusive orchestra and aims to change who belongs and is welcome in classical music spaces.
Read at ABC7 San Francisco
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]