The Tucson Symphony Orchestra will have a few new faces among its ranks this season — and one noticeable absence.
After three seasons, TSO Principal Trumpet Conrad Jones is gone, leaving the orchestra for a similar position with the larger Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He started the job last week.
“I look back on my time in Tucson with a tremendous amount of gratitude,” Jones said in an email last week. “I’m grateful for all the orchestral warhorses I got to play — some for the first time — the chance to learn from world-class conductors and colleagues, for all the support I received from the TSO in general, and most of all grateful to have made so many lifelong friends.”
Jones was with the TSO for three seasons. Last season, he also played with the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra and this summer was a member of the San Francisco Opera orchestra.
The TSO lists Jones as being on sabbatical for the season, which leaves open the chance that he could return.
But TSO Music Director Designate José Luis Gomez doesn’t see that happening.
“He is a fantastic player and I’m sure he will get his tenure and will want to stay” in Indianapolis, Gomez said this week during a break from holding auditions for several other positions in the orchestra including a spot in the cello section. “We will be happy to have him back, but he deserves also to expand. It is one of the things that makes this orchestra proud. … (We) were his first professional orchestra where he developed his repertoire and made him successful to win other auditions. I look at these situations as very positive. We will always be an institution that is proud for having been the orchestra that gave these young talents an opportunity so that they can go to other orchestras.”
Gomez will lead the TSO in its 2016-17 season opener Friday, Sept. 23, with guest pianist Joyce Yang. But he spent last week leading auditions for three violin positions and a cellist to replace Jesse Nummelin, who left the orchestra after last season. Longtime TSO horn player Victor Valenzuela auditioned and won the second horn seat; he was the third horn.
This week, Gomez will preside over auditions for the trumpet position.
Over his three seasons, Jones had become a fan favorite among TSO audiences, who gave him a standing ovation for his performance in early 2015 of Tsontakis’s “True Colors” trumpet concerto. He also performed with Tucson’s Grammy-winning True Concord Voices & Orchestra.
In August 2015, the Connie Hillman Family Foundation donated $400,000 to the TSO to endow the principal trumpet chair in perpetuity. Jones was the first recipient.
“This city and orchestra became much more than just getting to work and hang out with my friends; it really felt like home,” Jones said in an email Thursday, adding that he will miss “what feels like my second family.”
“What made Tucson even more special to me is that every time a close friend or family member came to visit, they immediately felt the same way. There’s just something in the air in Tucson that always had me at peace, a truly one-of-a-kind vibe.”
