Tucson Symphony Orchestra will introduce a new concertmaster and associate concertmaster when it opens its 2025-26 season on Sept. 26.
They are among nine new musicians joining the TSO this season to fill retirements and resignations, including that of horn player/oboist Michael Johnson, who left to join the military; and former Concertmaster Lauren Roth, who is now Atlanta Symphony’s associate concertmaster, said TSO President and CEO Paul Meecham.
“It’s exciting always to see new faces,” said TSO Music Director José Luis Gomez. “It’s a wonderful kind of synergy that we have in the musical world, internationally, because we are constantly meeting new people, new orchestras, and having the opportunity to get new talent and different talent. It’s a really exciting moment for the Tucson Symphony.”
Venezuela-born Jesús Linárez, who is wrapping up a fellowship with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, took Roth’s seat, while Tucson native Ludek Wojtkowski, who served several years as concertmaster with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra in Alaska, won the associate concertmaster seat that has been vacant since Michelle Abraham Kantor left at the end of the 2024 season.
Kantor moved to Australia with her husband, violinist and educator Tim Kantor, after he landed a job with the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
Venezuela-born Jesús Linárez makes his debut as the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s new concertmaster at next weekend’s season opening concert with guest pianist Olga Kern.
Meecham said a dozen violinists auditioned for the concertmaster position before the orchestra tapped Linárez, a product of Venezuela’s El Sistema, the same youth music program that trained Venezuela native Gomez.
After the candidates participated in in-person blind auditions in Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, Gomez said the selection committee was unanimous in tapping Linárez.
Ludek Wojtkowski, Tucson Symphony associate concertmaster, plays a Flemish violin he found in Paris. “The majority of the original body is from circa 1690 based on traits and materials used,” he says. “The top plate is likely from around 1750 and is probably German.”
“Jesus’s performance was impeccable,” Gomez said. “Not only could you tell that he was very well prepared, but also the musicianship and the command of the instrument and the musicality of the pieces that he played.”
The auditions, which took place in late April, included the candidates performing concertos, solos and excerpts from orchestra pieces.
Linárez, who started playing violin when he was around 7 or 8 years old, came to the U.S. in 2018 for college. He studied violin under Almita Vamos at Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Linárez, whose résumé includes serving as concertmaster of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, learned of the Tucson opening from fellow Venezuela native TSO principal horn Nelson Ricardo Yovera Perez. Linárez and Perez, who is on sabbatical this year, played together in the National Youth Symphony.
Other orchestra newcomers include:
- Violinist Christine Binzel, a native of Lexington, Massachusetts, who has spent the past several years with Texas ensembles.
- Cellist Colin Lambert, who has been a sub with the orchestra since 2022 and plays with the Arizona Opera Orchestra.
- Kody Thiessen, assistant principal bass, who served two years as principal bass with the Santa Rosa Symphony in California.
- Jasper Igusa replaced Johnson on oboe and English horn. He appeared with the TSO in eight concerts in 2024-25 while finishing up his final year at New York’s Mannes School.
- Clarinetist Melissa Frisch, whose résumé includes stops as principal clarinet with the Sarasota (Florida) Opera Orchestra and second seat with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, replaced longtime TSO second clarinet Andrew Braden, who retired after 40 years.
- Spanish trumpeter Ismael Cañizares Ortega, also a product of Roosevelt University, is acting principal trumpet, replacing Hayato Tanaka, who is taking a sabbatical. Tanaka won an audition for second/assistant principal trumpet with the Phoenix Symphony.
- Seattle native Conrad Smith, a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, rounds out the trumpet section.
The new musicians will make their debuts when the orchestra opens its regular season on Sept. 26 with piano soloist Olga Kern at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. For tickets and more information, visit tucsonsymphony.org.
Landing at TSO is homecoming for violinist
Tucson native Ludek Wojtkowski admits he might have been a little homesick when he found out his hometown orchestra was looking for an associate concertmaster.
Aside from a few sporadic visits, he hadn’t really been home much in the 15 or so years since he graduated from high school and left for Cleveland Institute of Music.
Ludek Wojtkowski poses for a photo inside his Tucson home. The Tucson native has returned to his hometown to become Tucson Symphony associate concertmaster. “It just seems like a very happening town ... and it seems there’s a booming artistic scene,” he says.
“I thought to myself, this is not an audition that opens very frequently, and I should just give it a shot, you know,” he said earlier this month as he was still unpacking and settling into his new Tucson life. “What’s the worst that can happen? They say no, and I just keep doing my life, you know? But they offered me the second chair position and I was very honored.”
The Tucson that greeted 33-year-old Wojtkowski was nothing like the town he left when he was in his late teens.
“It has changed quite a bit. It seems like there’s a lot more people living here and the city’s developing ... in a very exciting way,” he said. “It just seems like a very happening town ... and it seems there’s a booming artistic scene.”
Wojtkowski comes here with a résumé of experience, including performing with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, with renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, after earning a graduate degree from Yale University.
He also spent a couple of years as a cruise ship musician, traveling to Iceland, Greenland, South America, the Caribbean and “all kinds of places I would never have seen otherwise” until the COVID-19 pandemic grounded cruise ships and sidelined musicians.
He ended up in Anchorage, Alaska, where he joined the symphony and enrolled in the University of Alaska to study electrical engineering on the advice of his father, retired University of Arizona math professor Maciej P. Wojtkowski.
Ludek Wojtkowski plays the violin in his Tucson home, after returning to his hometown to become associate concertmaster of the Tucson Symphony.
In 2022, while he was finishing up his degree, Wojtkowski was named concertmaster, a role he seemed to cherish.
“The Anchorage Symphony has a long and proud history,” he said. “When I moved to Anchorage, I didn’t even know there was a symphony. And I came to the performance hall and I was like, wow, this is a beautiful hall. Being able to play there and experience that amidst this expanse of just wildness and intrigue ... I felt very privileged. And I thought it really kind of changed my playing.”
Wojtkowski can thank the Anchorage music community for the violin you’ll see him playing with the TSO.
The community chipped in and raised about $10,000 after Wojtkowski’s violin burst at the seams during the orchestra’s Champagne Pops concert in January 2024. The concert, with a rotating theme, was focused on country music, and Wojtkowski had the famous solo in Charlie Daniels’ monstrously famous fiddle-fest “Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
“On the last note of ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ the ferrule of my bow clipped the top plate of my violin and just smashed it,” Wojtkowski recalled. “I mean, the violin literally exploded in my hands, which was traumatic and tragic. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.”
The community launched a GoFundMe campaign and raised $10,000, which Wojtkowski spent on a Flemish violin he found in Paris.
“The majority of the original body is from circa 1690 based on traits and materials used,” he said. “The top plate is likely from around 1750 and is probably German.”
Tucson Symphony Orchestra announced its 2025-26 "Transcend Your Senses" season, which includes the long-awaited return of piano phenom Lang Lang.
