Sabatino Vacca
Sabatino Vacca is the Founder, Artistic Director, and Chorus Master of the newly formed Southern Ontario Lyric Opera (SOLO). He has been the Music Director of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra (CSO) since 2007, and helped found the Milton Philharmonic Orchestra in 2014 along side the late Jenn Callum. Sabatino led the Etobicoke Philharmonic Orchestra as Music Director from 2010 to 2017. SOLO debuted in concert in 2015, and followed with productions of La Traviata, Tosca, La Bohème, Pagliacci, and Gianni Schicchi, under his direction. This season he will lead performances of Verdi’s Rigoletto, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and a special concert with world-renowned Canadian Soprano Adrianne Pieczonka. The Cambridge Symphony Orchestra led by Sabatino has accompanied Ben Heppner, Richard Margison, Gary Relyea, and others in concert. He recently conducted an all-Tchaikovsky programme at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Sabatino has also conducted orchestras in the Czech Republic, Symphony Hamilton, the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony, the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brampton Symphony Orchestra, the Rose Orchestra, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra. For Opera York, he served as Artistic Director from 2004 to 2016. He was on staff with Opera Hamilton and has worked as an opera coach for the University of Toronto, Laurier University, as well as the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. His arrangements for the multi-media presentation “Children of a Vanished World” produced by Judy Kopelow as a commemoration to the children of the Holocaust were performed in Hamilton, Toronto, and Waterloo. It was also performed at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and at the University of California at Santa Barbara as part of their Arts and Lectures Series. He also completed arrangements for Quartetto Gelato’s Christmas CD. Sabatino is the recipient of the Spirit of Ontario Award for the Arts by the National Congress of Italian Canadians. He was recently inducted into the Alumni Gallery at McMaster University.
