The 2014-2015 season is Tristan Arnold’s first year as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Napa Valley Youth Symphony. Additionally,Tristan is currently the Orchestra Director at San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA). Previously he was the Director of Music at Lincoln High School where he took the program from three sections of beginning music to five sections within the disciplines of band, orchestra and chorus.

Tristan’s initial musical training was on violin and trombone before finding his true calling of the double bass. After graduating from Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, he studied music education at Northwestern University where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in music education before returning to the bay area to teach strings, chorus and steel pans at James B. Davidson Middle School in San Rafael.

In 2012 Tristan earned a Master of Music degree in conducting from San Francisco State University where he studied with Cyrus Ginwala and served as interim director of the SFSU wind ensemble and assistant conductor of the SFSU Orchestra. He continues to perform on the bass as a member of the eclectic acoustic quartet The Pine Needles and the San-Francisco based rock band Muralismo.

In addition to his work in San Francisco and Napa, Tristan directs the Preparatory Orchestra of the Santa Rosa Symphony. In 2014 he conducted the San Francisco All-City Middle School orchestra and has conducted at Cazadero Performing Arts Camp and the Santa Rosa Symphony’s Summer Music Academy. He traveled to London in Summer of 2014 as a travel scholar for American Public Media’s “London Rhapsody” tour. His writing has been published in Strings Magazine, Music Educators Journal.

In his few non-musical moments of the day, Tristan enjoys running and reading.

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