Biography
Luis Toro Araya has just been appointed as the assistant conductor of the National Orchestra of Spain for the 2022/23 season. He was a finalist of the Herbert von Karajan Young
Conductors Award 2021, where he conducted the Camerata Salzburg in the 100th edition of the Salzburg Festival. Toro Araya is also one of the designated winners of the International Conducting Competition Rotterdam (ICCR). In the 2018/2019 season he made his debut in his homeland with the Classical Orchestra USACH and the Symphony Orchestra of La Serena, where he will return in the next season. Further, he has worked with orchestras such as the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Olten Filarmoni of Izmir and Musikkollegium Winterthur. Future engagements include concerts in Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, the United States and Chile.
Born 1995 in San Vicente de Tagua Tagua, Chile, he studied violin at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile and at the Modern School of Music with Alberto Dourthé Castrillón. He was later part of the National Symphony Orchestra of Chile from 2014 until 2017. In 2015 he began his orchestral conducting studies with conductors such as Jorge Rotter, Leonid Grin, Garrett Keast and Helmuth Reichel Silva, with whom he regularly collaborates as assistant in different projects in Chile and Europe.
In masterclasses, he has been able to work with conductors such as Bernard Haitink, Paavo Järvi, James Lowe and Larry Rachleff. Luis Toro Araya studied orchestral conducting at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar with Prof. Nicolás Pasquet and at the Zurich University of Arts with Prof. Johannes Schlaefli.
