Maestro | YPSO | Chris Boyadjiev | Emile Serper | Back to Table of Contents

David Ramadanoff has been Music Director/Conductor since 1989. Under his leadership, YPSO has grown to a membership upwards of 100 young players from throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and has gained wide recognition as an outstanding youth ensemble.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Mr. Ramadanoff began his professional studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Temple University. He was a doctoral candidate at The Juilliard School where he also taught conducting until Seiji Ozawa offered him the position of Assistant Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.

Mr. Ramadanoff worked closely with Robert Page, William Smith, Herbert Blomstedt, Otto Werner Mueller, Seiji Ozawa, Eugen Jochum, Leonard Bernstein, and Gunther Schuller, and attended both Aspen and Tanglewood. He performed regularly on the San Francisco Symphony subscription concert series, continuing as Associate Conductor under Edo de Waart.

As Music Director, he developed and strengthened the Symphony’s educational programs and community concerts.

In 1980, Mr. Ramadanoff won the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Award, and in 1982 made his Carnegie Hall debut with the American Symphony. He served as Director of Orchestral Activities at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1984 to 1988 as well as Principal Conductor of the SFCM Orchestra. Mr. Ramadanoff has been guest conductor for performances with the Kansas City Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, the San Antonio Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Napa Symphony, Santa Cruz Symphony, and Fort Collins (Colorado) Symphony. 

In addition to YPSO, Mr. Ramadanoff is Music Director/Conductor of the Master Sinfonia Chamber Orchestra and the Conductor of the California Sound Collective. Mr. Ramadanoff also served as the Music Director/Conductor of the Vallejo Symphony Orchestra from 1983 to 2015.

Maestro | YPSO | Chris Boyadjiev | Emile Serper | Back to Table of Contents

Celebrating its 85th season in 2021-22, Young People’s Symphony Orchestra is the oldest youth orchestra in California and the first independent youth orchestra in the nation. Founded in Berkeley in 1936, YPSO has developed the musical talents and skills of thousands of students in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today we are the top regional youth orchestra located in the East Bay and serve musicians who live in 31 cities in seven counties including Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Solano, and Sonoma. Many YPSO alumni are internationally distinguished musicians and prominent community members.

Our mission is to guide young musicians, ages 11-21, to achieve excellence within an orchestral setting. We provide an educational environment that fosters accomplishment, serves as a cultural resource for the community, and builds future audience by instilling a passion for music. We encourage young people to become exemplary musicians, and young musicians to become exemplary people.

In his 33nd season with the orchestra, Music Director/Conductor David Ramadanoff leads a team of master teachers who provide specialized sectional coaching each week, addressing technical and musical issues unique to their instruments. Student applicants audition for placement into YPSO in Spring and Summer for the following season.

Maestro | YPSO | Chris Boyadjiev | Emile Serper | Back to Table of Contents

About our Soloists

Chris Boyadjiev, flutist, 17 years old, is a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College Program and Marin School of the Arts. For two seasons, he has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, and is holding principal flute with the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra, where he has been a member for four years. Having performed and toured Europe with Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra over five years, he won the concerto competition twice and performed as soloist with them. The CBDA selected him as first flute to the 2021 California All-State Honor Wind Symphony. He has been playing flute, piccolo and alto flute simultaneously with two orchestras throughout middle and high school.

In the past four years he performed in a Flute and Harp Duo with his mother, harpist Bertina Boyadjiev at Santa Sabina Chapel in San Rafael and hopes to record an album as a Duo before he leaves for music school. Chris is excited to be discovering the repertoire and coloristic variety of playing in a Woodwind Quintet at the SFCM Pre-College Program. At the MSA, he played in several chamber ensembles as well as performing as a soloist with the Wind Ensemble. 

 Chris has received the highest Presidential Merit Honor for the Inaugural Creative Youth Celebration of the Bay Area Creative Foundation in 2021. As a winner of the Junior Bach Festival five times and the Marin Music Chest Scholarship Competition for five consecutive years, Chris has performed in winner’s recitals in San Francisco and Marin. He was awarded Superior Command Performance rating at the CMEA Music Festivals twice.

Solo competition awards include Sacramento Flute Club (first place twice in 2020 and 2021), FlootFire Soloist Competition (first place 2020), Pelican International Music Competition (First Prize award 2021), Claire Johnson Soloist Competition (second place 2021), San Francisco Flute Society (2021 third place) and Beyond The Masterclass Competition (first place 2021) with Jim Walker in L.A.

Chris played at the Galway Flute Festival in Switzerland in 2019 where he was selected to perform in the masterclass of Sir James Galway. As a participant in the Juilliard Summer Winds Program in 2020 and 2021, Chris worked with Carol Wincenc, Leone Buyse, Amy Ferguson and Elizabeth Rowe. He has performed in the Marina Piccinini International Masterclass, Jim Walker’s Beyond The Masterclass, ARIA International (with Judith Mendenhall, Bonita Boyd and Jonathan Keeble), Burkart Flute Academy 2019 in New York, and attended the 2021 Interlochen Advanced Flute Intensive Summer Institute, working with Linda Chesis, Judith Mendenhall and Nancy Stagnitta. 

He is studying with Tim Day, principal flutist, and Catherine Payne, piccolo player of the San Francisco Symphony, and professors at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He is very grateful to his teacher, Carol Adee for all her support and guidance.

Chris loves to spend time with his older two brothers (Tristan is a jazz saxophonist and sound designer and Sava is a winemaker) and enjoys playing tennis with his school team. When possible, Chris hopes to be able to continue having summer vacations in Bulgaria and enjoy traveling around Europe with his family. 

You can follow Chris on his music adventures in Instagram here  and YouTube here

Maestro | YPSO | Chris Boyadjiev | Emile Serper | Back to Table of Contents

Emile Serper, Cellist, 18 years old, is a four-year veteran of YPSO, where he served two years as principal. He studies with Jeremiah Shaw, founder of the acclaimed Telegraph Quartet, in whose studio Emile played masterclass workshops with internationally renowned cellist Bonnie Hampton. Emile performed in the Junior Bach Festival for six years, honored both as ensemble musician and soloist, and he currently plays with the UCB Symphony.

Emile is also an accomplished composer, studying with David Conte, distinguished chair of the composition department at SF Conservatory. He won the Fanfare Composition Award in 2015, the Kris Getz Composer’s Scholarship Award in 2016 and 2018, won the San Francisco Contemporary Players Victor Salvo Award in 2020 and was honored to graduate from SF Conservatory Pre-College in 2021. 

In his early years, Emile enjoyed working for UNICEF by performing speedy math (squaring numbers dressed as a human calculator) while tipping his top hat to his mentor Art Benjamin, the “mathemagician”. Emile’s musical passions also launched at an early age; at ten his choral setting of the “Ave Maria,” dedicated to environmental concerns premiered in a concert with members of YPSO, was published by Hal Leonard and is performed by choirs worldwide. 

Emile began his studies at UC Berkeley this fall as a math and music double major, after graduating from Tilden Prep and Oakland Tech High School. Recently his interest in foreign languages and environmentalism intersected through volunteering as a Spanish translator for the National Equal Justice Association. In his spare time, Emile works as a music assistant, pianist, and coach with Kairos Youth Choir. He also enjoys playing jazz (bass, cello), hiking, tennis, entertaining people with impersonations, creating music and gaming content on YouTube and following the Oakland A’s. His Greek and Russian heritage comes to the fore in his love of friends and food!

“The Myaskovksy cello concerto was composed during a turbulent time in history, not unlike today. Rehearsing this is an expressive outlet for me in the face of challenges, societal and personal. I was really hoping to perform it in May 2020 before Myaskovsky became Mask-on-sky. That being said, it goes against my artistic principles to state specific emotions 

I feel when playing, because I think that subconsciously others become unable to feel things for themselves. I want everyone listening to come to their own experience through the piece’s long melodic lines and clear emotional trajectory. 

With my Russian heritage, I feel obligated to shed light on this composition which is undiscovered in the Western world. To my cellist friends, if you’re looking for some new repertoire, please consider this piece! It is of the same caliber as the standards, in my opinion. I’d like to thank the Budaev family for retrieving the score from the St. Petersburg music library while on a trip there. My deep gratitude to Maestro David for his incredible leadership over the years and getting to know this work inside out, Jeremiah Shaw for everything you could possibly ask from a teacher and more, and finally my friends on stage with me; I love you all more than I can say. Thank you to YPSO for giving me the opportunity to share. May this music create positive change.” ~Emile Serper

You can follow Emile on his music adventures in Instagram here and YouTube here

Maestro | YPSO | Chris Boyadjiev | Emile Serper | Back to Table of Contents