Lucinda Carver

“Carver makes musical thought manifest” – Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times.

The gifted and versatile, Lucinda Carver enjoys a prominent career as pianist, harpsichordist and conductor. As Music Director and Conductor of the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra, Ms. Carver garnered critical praise for her stylistic interpretations of music from the Classical Era. She has appeared as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Symphony and Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and has been featured as pianist and harpsichordist in solo and chamber music recitals at the Carmel Bach Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Prince George Music Festival, Long Beach Bach Festival and Corona del Mar Baroque Festival. Praised by the New York Times as “a find… a first rate conductor”, Ms. Carver has appeared as guest conductor with the New York City Opera, National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Minnesota Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Virginia Opera and Richmond Symphony. While a Fulbright Fellow to Austria, she concertized extensively throughout Europe under the auspices of the Fulbright and Austrian-American Educational Commissions. Ms. Carver is a member of the faculty at the USC Thornton School of Music where she teaches harpsichord, piano and conducting.  In the fall of 2009 Ms. Carver was named Artistic Director of Centrum’s Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival.

[Conductor/Soloist - Mozart Piano Concerto, KV. 595] “Carver impressed with fluency, alert rhythmicality and stylish ornamentation, particularly in the sublime slow movement. But what made this one of the waning season’s special Mozart performances was the pianist’s ability, by means of perfectly gauged dynamics and subtly enhancing rubatos, to project the poignancy and resignation lurking beneath the placid surface of the music. She seemed to capture the very essence of this elusive, unearthly music of parting.”

– Herbert Glass, The Los Angeles Times

“Carver, conducting from the keyboard, [Mozart Piano Concerto, KV 449] again demonstrated her Mozartean prowess. Hers was a performance that, rather than coming at you with flags waving and lights flashing, drew a listener gently into its grasp. Seated in the center of the orchestra, not soloistically out front, Carver presided over a reading in which musical questions, answer and comments, in their tone and inflection, were unusually well connected and conversational. She never pushed anything toward empty brilliance, but explored nuance with small gradations of touch. Her phrasing was vocally smooth. Even her whizzing scales in the finale were more pearly than preening”

– Timothy Mangan, The Los Angeles Times

“Conductor Carver also appeared as soloist in the Piano Concerto in A, K. 488… Carver presided over an insightful and rapt interpretation, one that took full account of the vocal quality of this music and full advantage of its chamber music possibilities. Unfailingly intimate as soloist, Carver used a soft legato tellingly, backing off to whispering levels for nuance. Conversing with her musicians, she found places to accompany them, to trade ideas. This was friendly music-making indeed.”

– Timothy Mangan, The Los Angeles Times