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COSETTE JUSTO Valdés
FEATURED CONCERTS:
Opening Weekend: From Paris to Madrid
September 26 & 27, 2026
From Dawn to Dusk
April 22 & 23, 2027
The charismatic, Cuban-born conductor Cosette Justo Valdés is a rising international star who currently serves as the Artistic and Music Director of the Vancouver Island Symphony (British Columbia).
Recognized and acclaimed for her high energy, passionate, intensely incisive performances, Maestra Valdés has been invited to lead many major orchestras around the globe including in Europe: the Tonkuenstler Orchestra of Austria, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, the Ulster Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lille, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Orchestra of the Theater Heidelberg, the National Theater Mannheim, the Winterthur Symphony, the Robert-Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz, and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra; in the United States – the Minnesota Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, the Utah Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, the Florida Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Eugene Symphony, the Orlando Philharmonic, the Elgin Symphony, the Brevard Music Festival, the Kalamazoo Symphony and the National Philharmonic; and extensively in her current home country of Canada – the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Regina Symphony, The Saskatoon Symphony, the London Symphonia (Ontario), I Musici de Montréal, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Thunder Bay Symphony, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra where she enjoyed a successful six year tenure as Resident Conductor from 2019-2025.
Through her daring, innovative programming with the Vancouver Island Symphony Ms. Valdés has quickly ignited new passion in her audiences, inspiring them to engage personally not only with living, contemporary music but also with rarely heard historical works.
As an ongoing part of her artistic agenda in Vancouver Island, Ms. Valdés proudly continues to give a powerful voice to the works of women composers and composers from Native Canadian and American heritage, and she fervently champions the music of these composers in her guest conducting appearances when possible. Maestro Valdés has singularly highlighted symphonic works by Gabriella Smith, Jocelyn Morlock, Missy Mazzoli, Amy Beach, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Clarice Assad, Joan Tower, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Vivian Fung, Augusta Holmés, Dorothy Chang, Nicole Lizée, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Ortiz, Chen Yi and many more in recent seasons of concert programs.
A strong advocate for bringing artists from other creative worlds into the symphonic concert hall, Cosette designs programs that often involve poets, dancers, actors and narrators, jazz and crossover musicians, musicians from her native Cuba and others alongside the forces of a modern symphony orchestra. This passion has brought her together on the same stage with such extraordinary multidisciplinary musical artists as Esperanza Spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Kinan Azmeh, with Cuban legends such as Harold López Nussa, Yaroldy Abreu Robles, Mayquel González, Aldo López Gavilán and the Mambo Kings of New York; and with indigenous Canadian composers from all corners of Canada including cellist and Carnegie Hall artistic partner Cris Derksen and singer-songwriter Jeremy Dutcher. She has delved deep into the world of George Gershwin with celebrated pianist and Gershwin scholar Kevin Cole and she has enjoyed the legacy of Frank Sinatra and Cole Porter as a frequent conductor with Tony De Sare.
Cosette’s literary-musical projects include two self-curated concert experiences merging the music of living composers with the words and performance of awarded poets at the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and with her home Vancouver Island Symphony. She has featured two Canadian Poet Laureates in her concerts – Titilope Sonuga, Nigerian Poet and Wakefield Brewster, People’s Poet Laureate of Calgary and has created new performing versions of classics such as Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet integrating poetry and narration into the live performance.
Valdés is equally at home in the world of opera and choirs, having led a celebrated production of Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” at the Edmonton Opera which she conducted from the harpsichord, as well as four distinct, uniquely staged and theatrical renderings of Handel’s Messiah with four different orchestras and a celebration of Cuban choral arts music with the Luminous Voices choir of Calgary all in recent seasons.
Ms Valdés maintains strong ties to her native Cuba, where she is celebrated as the Honorary Director of the prestigious Orquesta Sinfónica de Oriente in Santiago, in Cuba’s musical heartland, an orchestra she led as Music Director for nine years early in her professional life. During that time, seconded by only one administrator and a parttime librarian, she single-handedly managed and directed the 80-musician ensemble, developing an extensive repertoire of classical and contemporary music, jazz and pop, while championing both new and traditional Cuban music.
As a frequent guest conductor of the Orquesta Nacional de Cuba in La Habana, she also premiered many works by Cuba’s musical luminaries including Leo Brouwer, Alfredo Diez Nieto, Roberto Valera, and many more.
Cosette Justo Valdés holds a bachelor’s degree in conducting, as a protégé of Professor Jorge López Marín, from the Instituto Superior de Arte (La Habana, Cuba) and a master’s degree in conducting as a prized student of the revered Professor Klaus Arp, from the Staatsliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst (Mannheim, Germany).
In 2022 Ms Valdés was nominated for a Heinz Unger Award 2022 by the Ontario Arts Council of Canada.
