Odaline de la Martinez : Artistic Director/conductor

One of the liveliest and most enterprising musical personalities on the British music scene, Cuban-born Odaline de la Martinez pursues a busy international career performing a great variety of repertoire ranging from Mozart symphonies to the latest of contemporary music.

Brought up and educated in the USA, she settled in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. It is over a decade since Odaline de la Martinez became the first woman to conduct a BBC Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then she has been invited back very regularly and in the summer of 1994 she conducted a rare performance of The Wreckers by Dame Ethel Smyth, later released on CD by Conifer Records. A CD recording of Dame Smyth's orchestral music for Chandos Records followed.

Martinez is founder and music director of the contemporary ensemble Lontano with whom she has performed and broadcast all over the world, of the London Chamber Symphony and, in 1990, the European Women's Orchestra. As well as frequent appearances as guest conductor with the leading orchestras throughout Great Britain, including all the BBC orchestras, she has conducted amongst others, the San Diego and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Natal Philharmonic, the Aarhus Symphony, the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, Radio-Television Orchestra of Brazil, the Kansas City Symphony the Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM in Mexico City, the Orquestra do Algarve in Portugal, and the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. She is also known as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and Television.

In 1992 she founded her own record label, LORELT, which concentrates on areas neglected by many recording companies. Her first opera, Sister Aimée, was premièred in the United States in 1984 followed by further productions in London in 1987 and in California in 1998. She is currently working on another, Imoinda to commemorate the abolition of slavery. In 1988 she was awarded the Villa-Lobos medal by the Brazilian government in recognition of her outstanding work on promoting and conducting his music. In 1989 she was co-Director of VIVA - a festival of Latin-American music at London's South Bank Centre and was Artistic Director at the 1994 Cardiff Festival.

Martinez continues a busy worldwide conducting schedule. In 1995 she visited Colombia, Canada and New Zealand and later returned to take up a residency as special guest of the New Zealand Arts Council. In 1996 she conducted a series of concerts with the Sinfónica del Valle in Colombia, the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris, an Icelandic opera by Karólína Eiríksdóttir with Lontano at the Riverside Studios in London as part of the Nordic Season, visited Argentina as composer/conductor, returning to London for a Steve Reich 60th-birthday celebration concert presented by BBC Radio 3.

Recent engagements have included concerts in the United States, Denmark, Mexico, Portugal, Brazil, South Africa and Australia as well as performances throughout the United Kingdom, including a BBC Prom, a two-month tour of The Magic Flute, several commercial recordings together with concerts and broadcasts. Projects in 2006 included a Festival of American Music in London, a visit to Argentina with Lontano as resident ensemble, Lontano's 30th Anniversary Series in London and a two week tour of Mexico with the BBC Singers and the Orquesta Filarmonica de UNAM from Mexico City. In 2007/8 as well as her concert and recording work with Lontano she will make three visits to Portugal as well as a visit to Ireland. Recordings include two CDs featuring the choral and orchestral music of Elizabeth Maconchy, as a celebration of her 100th Anniversary: the first with the BBC Singers and later on with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; as well as CD releases with Lontano of music by Peter Child and Dorothy Ker.