‘Every moment of the action was alive...a crisp, dynamic performance…a great career awaits this young conductor.’
Los Angeles Times
Chilean-Italian conductor Paolo Bortolameolli is a prolific force on the podium, a talented lecturer, and advocate for the arts.
With a bustling concert schedule across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, Paolo is Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Azteca (México) and Principal Guest Conductor of Filarmónica de Santiago (Chile) and Music Director of the National Youth Symphony Orchestra in Chile.
Notable debuts between 2022 and 2024 include the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Hong Kong Philharmonic, as well as returns to the Hollywood Bowl, Kansas City Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires, and Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia.
Having conducted every significant orchestra in his Chilean homeland and been awarded prizes five times by the Arts Critics Association as Symphonic and Opera Conductor of the Year, Paolo has led ensembles and built relationships with orchestras around the world such as Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolivar in Caracas, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Haydn Orchestra in Bolzano, Gulbenkian Orchestra in Portugal, and the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence.
Recent opera productions include Tosca at the Opéra de Paris, Die Zauberflöte at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Golijov’s Ainadamar at Detroit Opera, as well as performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Ópera Nacional de Chile and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil (Chilean Premiere).
As now Former Associate Conductor of the LA Philharmonic he led the landmark production of Meredith Monk’s inventive opera ATLAS, performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2019. He is passionately committed to new music, including the works of Miguel Farías, Gabriela Ortiz, and Jorge Peña Hen, among others. In 2022, his commission of Miguel Farías’s Estallido was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
As Artistic Director of the Sinfónica Azteca, he leads an educational residency run by the Fundación Azteca from Grupo Salinas in Mexico every year. He has developed several new media initiatives with the Esperanza Azteca in Mexico, and his now legendary “Ponle Pausa,” a project that seeks to rethink the concept of music education through the implementation of short videos and concerts targeting social network users, has received wide acclaim.
In 2018 he was was a guest-lecturer for a TED Talk in New York. His talk has already gathered more than 770,000 views on YouTube.
In 2020 he released his first book: RUBATO Procesos musicales y una playlist personal.
Paolo holds a Master of Music degree (Yale School of Music, 2013), a Graduate Performance Diploma (Peabody Institute, 2015), a Piano Performance Diploma (Universidad Católica de Chile, 2006) and a Conducting Diploma (Universidad de Chile, 2011).