Victor Vener
Throughout his professional career, Dr. Victor Vener has garnered a well-deserved reputation as a masterful music director, conductor and academic who exudes infectious enthusiasm and wit as he effectively merges entertainment with musical enlightenment.
Dr. Vener is known for dynamic original concerts that mix classical and popular music, with special guests from classical performers and recording artists to pop sensations.
“I’m looking at things as a musical director, and as a musician” Dr. Vener explained to a reporter about how he chooses music. “My problem is not that I have to pick music for a season of concerts. My problem is what am I’m not picking for those concerts. It’s one of exclusion rather than inclusion. There are so many pieces of good music I would love to bring to my audience but there isn’t time for all to fit.”
Born and raised in Pasadena, California, by parents Dorothy and Abraham Vener, Dr. Vener credits his older brother Tom Hanafin as “the one who taught me about classical music. My brother is really key to who I am today.”
He learned to play what would become his lifelong instrument of choice – the French horn – while he was at McKinley Junior High.
At the University of Southern California, Dr. Vener earned:
- Bachelor of Music in Horn Performance and Music History – September 1963-June 1967
- Master of Music in Opera, Conducting and Stage Direction – June 1969-June 1970
- Doctor of Musical Arts (Conducting, Horn Performance, Musicology, Historical Music Editing) January 1976-January 1978 – the first ever student to receive a doctorate in French Horn Performance at USC.
Dr. Vener also studied music and played French horn on scholarship at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California, in 1963. In 1968, he was one of only 100 instrumentalists chosen from around the world for a Fromm Fellowship to Tanglewood with the Boston Symphony. He is a graduate of Conducting Studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria during summer of 1971.
Dr. Vener is considered the “father” of the outdoor, admission-charged concerts in Los Angeles County beginning with the Pasadena Pops that he founded as a non-profit in 1986, programming and conducting concerts through 1996.
When Dr. Vener was Music Director of the Burbank Symphony, he and the orchestra made a Bank of England commercial produced and directed by Ridley Scott that traced the history of music in 30 seconds. Victor recalled “it started with the caveman and ended with Beethoven’s 9th with me giving the downbeat with a shot of this full orchestra and the sand dune behind it.” He also re-opened, with the City of Burbank, The Starlight Bowl.
In 1995, Dr. Vener founded the California Philharmonic Orchestra, and regularly attracted 4,000 to 5,000 music lovers to concerts at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and then on the infield of Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California, during summer concert seasons. Those summer seasons also included Sunday matinee performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
With a strong commitment to new music and to expanding the symphonic repertoire, Dr. Vener and the California Philharmonic have presented nine world premieres, four Southern California premieres of orchestral works, and three world premieres of chamber music.
In addition to concert seasons at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, the Music Center’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Santa Anita Park, Dr. Vener and Cal Phil musicians hosted the chamber music series “Martinis, Music and The Maestro” in the Sofia Ballroom of Noor in Pasadena.
The California Philharmonic also presented concerts at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, The Rose Bowl, Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, The Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State LA, Haugh Performing Arts Center in Glendora, Irvine Meadows and Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles – entertaining more than 750,000 concert-goers. An additional six million listeners have heard broadcasts of Cal Phil’s concerts since 1997.
