Florin Parvulescu

Florin Parvulescu was born in 1971 in Bucharest, Romania. He started playing the violin at the age of six at the Georges Enescu music school. In 1978 he attended the Juilliard School Pre-College division, studying with Shirley Givens. In 1989 he went on to study at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where his principal teachers were Shirley Givens, Sylvia Rosenberg and Herbert Greenberg. He also worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and violinist Berl Senofsky. In addition to earning Bachelors and Artist Diploma degrees at Peabody, Mr.Parvulescu was awarded numerous prizes , among them the Marbury Award and Yale Gordon award.

Mr. Parvulescu joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1998. From 1996 – 1998, he was a member of the St. Louis Symphony.

As soloist and chamber musician Mr. Parvulescu has appeared in recital series at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Kennedy Center in Washington,DC, Dame Myra Hess recital series in Chicago, Aspen Music Festival, Berkeley Chamber Music Series, Johanessen International School of the Arts in Victoria British Columbia, San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, Chamber Music Series St. Louis, Heidelberg, Germany and Fontainebleau, France and as soloist with the Xiamen Philharmonic in 2009 and 2010. He has performed in chamber music concerts with pianists Kiril Gerstein and Anton Nel, and performed Thomas Ades’s Piano Quintet with the composer at the piano. The San Francisco Chronicle praised him for his “ gleaming tone and pyrotechnics”.

Mr.Parvulescu has given masterclasses at the Beijing Conservatory and taught at the Singapore International Violin Festival in 2018 . He has been featured on the McGraw Hill Young Artist Showcase on WQXR radio NY, National Public Radio, WFMT Chicago,and internationally on Arte TV in South Korea.

Mr. Parvulescu also studied conducting with David Zinman at the Aspen Music Festival and Michael Tilson-Thomas. As a conductor, Mr.Parvulescu has led the New World Symphony, the Aspen Academy Orchestra, the Guangxi Symphony, the Mid-Summer Mozart Festival, the Academy Orchestra of San Francisco and the Macao Youth Symphony. In addition, he led performances of Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” and works by Charles Ives and Scott Joplin with members of the San Francisco Symphony as part of the Symphony’s “ Keeping Score” project. In August 2013 he conducted the Macau Youth Orchestra in an all-Mozart program ( Don Giovanni overture, Violin Concerto no.5 and Symphony no.40) for their US debut at Merkin Concert Hall in Lincoln Center, replacing the regularly scheduled conductor on one day notice. In the summer of 2013 he conducted performances of Russian classics Scheherazade and Polovetsian Dances as well as an evening of John Williams at “Music in the Mountains” Festival in Grass Valley California. In 2014 he appeared with the Nanning Symphony in China in a program featuring Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Overture, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Mussorgsky-Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition. During the 2015 Mid-Summer Mozart Festival in San Francisco he stepped in for ailing conductor

George Cleve conducting a varied program of arias from Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito as well as concertos for French horn and oboe. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: ” Parvulescu …..stepped into the breach admirably.

His interpretive style is more fluid and lyrical, which made for an interesting contrast between the two. It also fell to him to accompany four soloists-a daunting assignment which he fulfilled with impressive aplomb.”