Connolly Is Pacific Concertmaster

The Pacific Symphony has named a new concertmaster: Kevin Connolly, a violinist with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra who also is concertmaster of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.

Connolly, 39, worked this past season as guest concertmaster for two performances with the Pacific, Orange County’s largest professional resident orchestra.

The concertmaster fulfills a leadership role in management of the orchestra, besides being its principal violinist and heading the first-violin section.

The full-time post had been vacant since January 1996, when former concertmaster Sheryl Staples left to become associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. Staples had been the Pacific concertmaster since the departure of her predecessor, Andre Granat, in 1993.

“I have hired a wonderful violinist,” Pacific conductor Carl St.Clair said Monday. “That has always been the priority--to look for the best artist. Also, I feel it’s really crucial at this point in our development to have somebody who will come here and dedicate his primary energies to the orchestra.”

Connolly’s playing and his influence on the Pacific’s string section drew praise from a Times music critic in May for an orchestra performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony.

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Daniel Cariaga wrote that the Pacific’s violinists, “apparently operating on an ever-rising spiral of achievement, ascended another plateau in their growth, aided in no small way by the presence of guest concertmaster Kevin Connolly, who excelled in his solo moments.”

The Pacific Symphony was founded in 1978. It plays at the Orange County Performing Arts Center and has an outdoor summer season at Irvine Meadows Amphitheater.

Connolly’s musical career has been broad and varied. In addition to serving as co-concertmaster of Pro Musica of Santa Fe, he has played in the North German Radio Orchestra, the State Opera Orchestra of Hamburg and the Caracas Philharmonic.

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A lover of chamber music, Connolly is a frequent guest artist with the Ensemble of Santa Fe and in 1996 founded the Carolina Chamber Players, based in Columbia, S.C.

Connolly, who plays a modern instrument by violin-maker Sebastian Wojtszyn, received his music degree from the University of New Mexico. He has trained at the Aspen Music Festival with Dorothy Delay, the Juilliard School’s noted violin professor, and with Jascha Brodsky at the New School of Music in Philadelphia.