Award-winning Mexican conductor, Felipe Tristán is known for bringing lively musical prowess to the podium. He has worked with orchestras around the world and currently serves as principal conductor of the Ballet de Monterrey, interim artistic director of the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, and at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege division, in New York. Also, he serves as the creative & artistic consultant of the GRAMMY®️ award-winning, Afro Latin Jazz Alliance.
Currently based in New York, he is the founding Music Director of the Monterrey Summer Opera Academy – a successful program that gathers talented voice students from around the world. Co-founding faculty members include the great American mezzo-soprano, Dolora Zajick, from the Curtis Institute of Music. Also in the summers, Felipe is the principal conductor of the Texas New Music Festival, where he has premiered 30+ works by living composers.
Now a regular guest conductor of the worldwide-known Met Gala, Felipe Tristan can be seen on the Disney+ documentary "In Vogue: The 90s," as he prepares for a Met Gala performance guided by Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue Magazine and Condé Nast. He was featured in FORBES magazine in the "Working Journal" section by photographer Michael Fiedler. He is committed to promoting an inclusive and diverse performing arts industry. Thus, he has collaborated with artists and producers on initiatives such as Carnegie Hall Citywide, NY Phil Bandwagon, Met Opera, Lincoln Center, and the GRAMMY®️ award-winning Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra (HBO’s Fandango at the Wall).
He is the 1st Prize Winner of the Klangkraft Dirigierwettbewerbs Conducting Competition (Germany 2019), 1st Prize Winner of the International Conductors Workshop & Competition (Atlanta 2018), 1st Prize of the Shining Stars Concerto Competition of New York; and received an Excellence Award from the Mexican Music Awards, in 2017.
In 2017, Felipe toured China as a guest conductor and presented a TEDx Talk in Beijing and Zhengzhou, and later that same year, he was honored to conduct at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, in Mexico City.
Recent engagements include concerts with the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, New Amsterdam Symphony, Gwinnett Symphony Chamber Orchestra, North Shore Symphony Orchestra, Zhengzhou Symphony, among others. In Mexico, engagements with the Aguascalientes, Querétaro, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Monterrey, Baja California, and Michoacán symphony orchestras. Operatic highlights include Falstaff and Il Trovatore (Verdi), La bohème (Puccini), Carmen (Bizet), L’amico Fritz (Mascagni), L’elisir d’amore (Donizetti), Don Giovanni (Mozart). Recently, he conducted the world premiere of the ballet "Maximiliano & Carlota" with music by Caleb Ruiz and a production of Prokofiev's "Romeo & Juliet" with the Ballet de Monterrey.
Recording credits include an album as a producer with flutist Krzysztof Kaczka and members of the Met Orchestra with works by Schubert (Hänssler Classics) and the album Flute Concertos by Reinecke & Penderecki with flutist Krzysztof Kaczka and the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra (Hänssler Classics), that received Poland's foremost prize by the Ministry of Culture & National Heritage; the Muzyczne Orły 2024, under the category of Best Recording.