Samuel Ferrer

Double bassist Samuel Ferrer joined the Hong Kong Philharmonic at the start of the 2002/03 season. Having been highly active as a freelancer in New York City, Ferrer has performed in Carnegie Hall with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the American Composer's Orchestra and the New York Pops, among others. He has also worked regularly with such ensembles as the New York Chamber Symphony, New York City Ballet, Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the Westchester Philharmonic. His chamber music performances with the new music groups, Ensemble 21 and Ensemble Sospeso, received critically acclaimed reviews by The New York Times. In addition, he has appeared with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, Speculum Musicae, Riverside Symphony, and the Florida Orchestra.

While on tour with the Orpheus in 1998, Sam Ferrer participated in highly publicized performances at the Hanoi Opera House, marking the first concerts by an American ensemble in Vietnam since the war.

He has also held principal bass chairs with the Sarasota Opera Festival and Key West Symphony Orchestra, both in Florida, and served on the faculty of the Kinhaven Summer Music School in Vermont.

Originally from northern California, Samuel Ferrer graduated from the University of Southern California and Yale University, where he received the Slam Stewart Outstanding Bassist Award. While a graduate student at Yale, he was also a member of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, and as a recipient of the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, studied for one year in Paris with the virtuoso and pedagogical author, Francois Rabbath. His summer studies included the European Mozart Festival (Poland), Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara), Waterloo Music Festival (Princeton University) and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Connecticut), to which he was re-invited as a guest artist. His principal teachers include Donald Palma, Paul Ellison and John Clayton, and also studied privately with Ed Barker and Dennis Trembly.

Mr. Ferrer plays on a modern double bass by Daniel Hachez, who won the gold-medal luthier prize at the 2003 Convention of the International Society of Double Bassists.