PORTLAND FESTIVAL SYMPHONY
"T h e P e o p l e s S y m p h o n y"
Free Summer Concerts Since 1981
L e g a c y &. F u t u r e
Lajos Balogh has been a central figure in Portland's classical music life for more than half a century. A longtime Principal Second Violinist with the Oregon Symphony, he founded the Metropolitan Youth Symphony and served as its maestro from 1974 to 2012, and founded the Portland Festival Symphony, which he conducted from 1981 to 2016. He also served on the faculties of Marylhurst College, Portland State University, and Lewis and Clark College, and conducted the Marylhurst Symphony Orchestra. Oregon. Born in 1931 in Beled, Hungary, Balogh came of age during World War II, when his hometown was bombed and his high school converted into a military hospital. He nonetheless pursued music at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, studying with Dezsö Rados, Pal Jardanyi, Anton Molnar, and Zoltán Kodály. As a young man he took part in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and when Soviet forces moved to crush the uprising, he fled on foot across the Austrian border. He continued his studies in Munich, where he lived for nearly a decade, performed on German television and radio, and led a Hungarian string quartet in the Netherlands before crossing the Atlantic playing violin aboard a ship bound for New York. He has appeared as soloist with the Munich, Nuremberg, and Göttingen symphonies and has recorded for radio stations worldwide. Balogh settled in Portland, where his brother was teaching at the University of Portland, and earned a Master of Music degree from the University of Oregon. He joined the Oregon Symphony under Jacques Singer and went on to play under Lawrence Smith and James DePreist, at one point sharing concertmaster duties. He also performed with Portland Opera for many years. In 1974 he founded the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, driven by a conviction that music should be available to every child regardless of background. Incorporated in 1975 with 16 string players, MYS has grown into one of the region's largest youth music organizations, now serving more than 400 students across fifteen ensembles. He launched the Portland Festival Symphony in 1981, the same year he became a U.S. citizen, partly to celebrate his new citizenship; the orchestra brings free summer concerts to neighborhood parks throughout the Portland area. He later donated an outdoor band shell to Marylhurst University to support outdoor music-making. A resident of Lake Oswego, Balogh continues to play Bach on his violin daily. He is the father of Béla R. Balogh of the ensemble 3 Leg Torso.
Meet Our New Artistic Director & Conductor Jonathan DeBruyn. Jonathan grew up in Lake Oswego, Oregon in a musical household, and was exposed to classical music from a young age. He received his BM in Violin Performance from Portland State University, studying with Carol Sindell, and completed his MM in Orchestral Conducting at the University of Oregon with Dr. David Jacobs. He was a Conducting Fellow with the Eugene Symphony for the 2018-2019 season and has been a guest conductor with the Beaverton Symphony and the Sunnyside Symphony, and in 2021 was named a Faber Conducting Fellow with the American Austrian Foundation. In 2022 he was named the conductor of the “Young Artists Debut!” concerto competition. In 2023 he was named the Music Director of the Sunnyside Symphony, as well as the Artistic Director of the Salem Philharmonia. He has performed as a violinist with many local orchestras, including the Portland Columbia Symphony, the Newport Symphony, and the Eugene Symphony. He has conducted as far as Canada, Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. In his free time, he enjoys drawing, reading, and practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He is the son of composer Randall DeBruyn.
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