Reading Symphony Orchestra Conductor and Music Director
Dr. Roland Vazquez,
the current Music Director of the Reading Symphony Orchestra, is the sixth conductor to lead the RSO. Born and raised in New York City, he showed an early interest in both music and art. He learned to play the violin as a fifth grader, in a unique public school in the Bronx, in which selected students were formed into an orchestra. Thus, his first experiences in music took place in an orchestra, and orchestral music has ever since been at the center of his life.
He attended the City College of New York, where he received B.A. and M.A.degrees in music and musicology. Vazquez began a career in public school teaching in New York City, alternating between music teaching and elementary classroom work. During that period he founded and conducted his first orchestra, the Unicorn Ensemble. He decided to go further into music study, leaving New York for Cornell University, where he studied musicology and composition and was awarded a PhD.
In 1980 Vazquez moved to the Boston area, joining the music faculty at MIT. At MIT, he instituted a series of orchestral readings, orchestral concerts and concert versions of operas, including The Magic Flute and Beethoven’s 9th and others.
In 1988 he spent six months doing music research in Oxford, England and upon returning, joined the music Department at Tufts University where he taught music history and theory courses and conducted the Tufts University Orchestra.
Vazquez is currently on the faculty of Bowdoin College, in Brunswick Maine,where he is Director of Chamber Ensembles and Conductor of the Bowdoin Orchestra. In June 2010 he retired from many years as a public elementary school teacher. His last position in this role was at the Pentucket Lake School in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Vazquez began his tenure as conductor of the RSO in 1997. During the ensuing dozen years, the Reading Symphony has continued to grow in its reach and repertoire, thanks to the faithful support of its patrons. Among the many notable concerts of the past ten years have been performances of all the Brahms symphonies, Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony, Mahler’s 1st Symphony, Schubert’s“Great” C-major Symphony and piano concertos by Gershwin, Grieg, Schumann, Mozart and Bartok.
Roland Vazquez lives in Andover with his wife, flutist and psychologist, Maggie
Jackson. Their daughter, Elizabeth, is an accomplished singer.
Reading Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster
Marsten Parker,
Reading resident Marsten Parker is delighted to be able to return to the RSO as concertmaster this season, having previously served in this position from 2005 to 2008.
Marsten is also concertmaster of the New Philharmonia Orchestra in Newton, where he has played for maestro Ronald Knudsen since 1985.
After obtaining a degree in violin performance from the Mannes College of Music in New York, Marsten decided not to let the demands of trying to play professionally sour his love of music, and instead launched a successful career as a software developer.
In 1998, he left the software industry to begin self-employment as a securities trader, allowing more time for violin playing. Marsten has lived in Reading since 1986 with his wife, Lori. Their daughter Kristin is an actress living in Manhattan, and their daughter Julia is a sophomore at RMHS.