Sara Jobin has conducted performances of Tosca, Der fliegende Holländer, Norma, and the world premiere of Philip Glass’ Appomattox for San Francisco Opera, and led a production for that company of Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince last May. She has also led productions for the San Francisco Opera Center including Conrad Susa’s Transformations, The Bear, Dr. Heidegger’s Fountain of Youth, and Egon und Emilie. Recent credits elsewhere include Carmen with Anchorage Opera; a live recording of John Musto’s Volpone at Wolf Trap Opera; Carmen, La Bohème, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and an upcoming Faust at Tacoma Opera; performances of Der fliegende Holländer with Arizona Opera, and a fire opera version of The Seven Deadly Sins at the Crucible School for Fire Arts in Oakland. In past seasons she made her debut with Symphony Silicon Valley and the Dayton Philharmonic.
Ms. Jobin’s recording with Frederica von Stade of the world premiere River of Song by Chris Brubeck can be heard on Convergence on the Koch label, available on Amazon.com and itunes. Brubeck wrote the piece for her and the Tassajara Symphony, an orchestra she directed for four years after its founding in 1998.
At age 16 she attended Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, where she was a Leonard Bernstein Music Scholar. After graduation, as a John Knowles Paine Travelling Fellow, she studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School. In 1999 she was the first recipient of the JoAnn Falletta Award from The Women’s Philharmonic, and in 2004 she had the honor of making history as the first woman to conduct mainstage subscription performances at San Francisco Opera. The Solti Foundation acknowledged her with a Special Grant in 2006, and she was a Visiting Artist at Harvard in 2008.
Not one to fit neatly into categories, Sara Jobin has a black belt in judo, and was the 2006 national champion in Ju-no-kata. From 2001 through 2009 she sang in the gospel choir at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.
October 2009
