I am very sorry to learn that conductor and music educator Matteo Giammario has died. Among his other achievements, Giammario founded the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra. He devoted much of his life to inspiring young people. His contagious love of music made the world a better place. Happily, he lived to a venerable age. Giammario died on March 9, just days shy of his 101st birthday. Here’s a bio extracted from an article I wrote about the organization in 2024:
Born to parents who immigrated from Italy’s Apulia region – the heel of the “boot,” as it were – he developed an early fascination with music from the Neapolitan songs he overheard growing up in Trenton’s Little Italy. His mother steered him from the guitar to the violin, which started him on the path of his life’s passion, which has been for music education and performance.
Following service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Giammario used his G.I. Bill benefits to attend NYU, where he received his bachelor’s degree. He earned his master’s from Columbia University and a doctorate from the University of Arizona. Further training was undertaken at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome.
Most of Giammario’s teaching career was spent in the Trenton school district, where he served first as a music educator, then as director of music education. In 1960, he was invited by the American Federation of Musicians, Local 62, to conduct the Mercer County Symphonic Orchestra. The orchestra originally performed mainly at the Trenton War Memorial and, according to an article in the digital archive of the New York Times, was intended as a sort of training ground for future members of the Greater Trenton Symphony. From the start, its personnel consisted of local high school and regional college musicians.
The orchestra became a resident ensemble of the Lawrenceville School. Another article in the Times announces a benefit concert at the school in 1975 to be conducted by the internationally beloved pianist and humorist Victor Borge. The orchestra, it notes, “is composed of approximately 70 musicians from public and private junior and senior high schools and few community colleges within the Delaware Valley.”
At the time, Giammario was also conductor of the Bucks County Youth Orchestra and the Ars Nova Chamber Orchestra.
Later still, Giammario oversaw the board during a period of transition that yielded the orchestra’s rebranding as the GPYO, offering even greater breadth to the student musician experience.
“He is so dedicated to the concept of music, music education, music performance,” [board chair of the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra David] DeFreese says. “He’s a true piece of history and a legend in the Trenton-Princeton community.”
In retirement, Giammario continues to compose and arrange, and of course share his rich history and that of the orchestra he founded. The concerto competition, named for him, is one of the many ways in which the GPYO has committed to honor his legacy.
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I only just learned of his passing from an article that ran in last week’s edition of the Princeton weekly, U.S. 1.
https://www.communitynews.org/princetoninfo/business/fastlane/gpyo-founder-matteo-giammario-dies-at-age-100/article_d255dae1-b822-4b15-b218-f0d972114b0d.html
R.I.P.
