New Albany Symphony Orchestra

New Albany Symphony Orchestra – USA

International Choir meetings of the Sun – June 2025 – Provence (France)

The New Albany Symphony Orchestra (NASO) is a community orchestra comprised of over 120 community, student, and professional musicians from all over the Columbus metro area who come together four times a year to present concerts from the professional classical repertoire in the beautiful Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts in the heart of New Albany.

NASO was designed by its founders to be a true community orchestra, in which students are mentored by professional musicians, talented community musicians have a stage on which to perform, and professional musicians have an additional outlet for their craft.

Founded in 2007 by New Albany resident and violist Heather Garner and founding conductor Luis Biava, the New Albany Symphony Orchestra is proud to serve the community for more than a decade.

A strong component of the New Albany Symphony Orchestra’s mission is music education, and our commitment to even the youngest student musician in the orchestra is that he or she will perform on at least one piece per concert. The orchestra offers free master classes, a sensory-friendly series for our friends in the autism and dementia/Alzheimer’s communities, and a student concerto competition, in which talented young people from all over the state compete to win the opportunity to perform a concerto on stage in front of a live audience. Additionally, the orchestra collaborates with many area arts organizations and schools. Ticket prices are kept low – even offering free tickets to our underserved partners – to ensure that the art of classical music remains accessible to the people of New Albany and our surrounding areas.

Luis Biava, Conductor & Artistic Director

Luis Gabriel Biava is currently celebrating his 17th season as Music Director of the New Albany Symphony, an orchestra that performs a wide variety of concerts for the community, presenting the major repertoire, commissions, and a young artist’s competition. As Music Director of the New Albany Symphony, Mr. Biava has conducted notable guest artists including Jon Kimura Parker, Peter Dugan, David Finckel, Hilary Hahn, Chee-Yun, Charles Yang, Soovin Kim, Karen Gomyo, Michael Feinstein, Itzhak Perlman, and Branford Marsalis. He has also served as Principal Conductor for New Albany Ballet’s Nutcracker production.

This year, Mr. Biava conducted and played with the Bogota Philharmonic for two weeks in subscription concerts and recently conducted at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music conducting workshop with Mark Gibson and Gustav Meier. In the summer of 2012, Mr. Biava was cover-conductor for the Philadelphia Orchestra for their final concert in Saratoga Springs, New York, and that same year conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Mozart’s Adagio and Rondo for violin. He also guest conducted the Clermont Symphony in a concert commemorating the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.  In 2011, he was re-engaged by the Guatemala National Symphony, where he performed the Beethoven Triple and conducted Strauss’ Don Juan. In 2010, he conducted performances of Puccini’s La boheme in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also has conducted The Marriage of Figaro and repeated performances of La boheme with Opera Libera; an opera company founded in honor of the late John Douglas, famed opera director at Temple University. In the summer of 2008, he conducted performances of Salieri’s Prima la musica, poi le parole, and Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Mr. Biava’s educational endeavors include the School of Orchestral Studies in Saratoga Springs—a program for young musicians that mirrors the repertoire of the Philadelphia Orchestra during the three weeks of their residency at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

In addition to his appointment as Music Director for the New Albany Symphony, Mr. Biava is principal cello of Columbus Symphony Orchestra (CSO), artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Dublin (CMSD), and Music Director for Camarata, an ensemble that performs a classical concert series at the beautiful St. Mary Church in Columbus, Ohio. He is Music Director of the Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra and Principal Conductor for Ballet Met’s Nutcracker. He is active as a soloist in the standard repertoire, new works, and is also involved as a chamber musician, having played the complete cycles of the string quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. Mr. Biava is currently performing the complete piano trios of Beethoven and Mozart, with contemporary works by Carter, Higdon, Augusta Read Thomas, Bernstein, and Pärt.

Mr. Biava’s family represents four generations of musicians. His first cello studies were with his uncle, Miguel Uribe, in his native Colombia, where he performs regularly with the Biava-Uribe Trio. He attended the University of Michigan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in performance, and he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Leonard Rose. He also studied with Oliver Edel, Samuel Mayes, Gabor Rejto, and Elsa Hilger. Additionally, Mr. Biava has studied conducting with Michael Jinbo at the Pierre Monteux School, Hancock, Maine; and with his father, who was conductor-in-residence of the Philadelphia Orchestra and conducting professor at Temple University. He attended the Aspen Music Festival, where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin, and also served as principal cellist.

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