Dr. Richard E. Yaklich, currently serves as an Associate Professor of Music and Director of Orchestras at Michael Krop High School in South Florida; Music Director and President of the Broward Pops Orchestra; Former Conductor of the South Florida Youth Symphony (2002-2013) and the former Director of the Jubilate Chamber Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Kingsport Symphony and Music Director of the Kingsport Youth Symphony He has conducted orchestras throughout the United States and Eastern Europe including the Maikop Philharmonic and the Sochi Symphony Orchestra in Russia and the Constantia Orchestra in Romania. Dr. Yaklich has conducted the New River Symphony and the Alhambra Orchestra in South Florida on several occasions. Dr. Yaklich is also a certified orchestra adjudicator for the Florida Orchestra Association and has adjudicated orchestra festivals throughout the state of Florida including serving as the conductor for the Broward All County Silver Honors Orchestra in 2018. He attended the Tanglewood Music Center where studied conducting with such musical notables as Gustav Meier, Charles Dutoit, Leon Fleisher, Maurice Abravanel, and Seiji Ozawa. While studying at the Conductor’s Institute in 1993, he had master classes with Donald Portnoy, Samuel Jones, Larry Newland, and Paul Vermal. He also studied with David Effron and Yuri Bekker at the Miami Music Festival In addition to his conducting activities, he is an active cellist and composer and has had works performed by the Colorado Symphony and in Romania. His composition, “Theme and Variations for Orchestra” was performed by the South Florida Youth Orchestra in January of 2003, and “In Memoriam” was given its world primer at the University of Miami in 2007. A winner of the Walter Charles Conducting Fellowship, Colorado Arts and Humanities Grant and the Allied Arts, Inc. grant, he has also been listed in “Who’s Who Among American Colleges and Universities.” A member of the Gustav Mahler Society, American Symphony Orchestra League and the Conductor’s Guild, he has published two book on Eugene Ormandy (1) “Sergei Rachmaninoff - Symphony NO 1 - Eugene Ormandy’s Performing Version - An Annotated Recon construction (2) The Orchestra Scores of Eugene Ormandy – Creating the Philadelphia Sound - published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2021 and 2017; and (3) “An Orchestra Conductor’s Handbook for Locating Repertoire and Programming” Mellen Press, 2003. Dr. Yaklich received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Colorado; his Master’s degree in music from Colorado State University and his Doctorate in Orchestra conducting from the University of South Carolina. He is a native of Pueblo, CO and grew up playing cello, first in the Pueblo Youth Symphony and latter with the Pueblo Symphony, Mozart Chamber Orchestra and Pueblo Jazz Orchestra. He is an avid reader of history, he collects classical music CDs and scores.
“A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
“Music begins where the possibilities of language end.”
Jean Sibelius
"A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one."
Dmitri Shostakovich
