Born in Mexico, Jorge Federico Osorio began his musical studies at the age of five with his mother. He studied at the conservatories of Mexico, Paris and Moscow and his teachers have included Jacob Milstein and Wilhelm Kempff, among others. Maximiano Valdes is Principal Conductor of the Orquesta Sinfonica del Principado de Asturias in Spain and as of September, 2002, Chief Conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, Chile. He was born in Santiago and began his studies in piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music there and continued at the Accademia de Santa Cecilia in Rome where he took courses in composition and conducting. Completing his diploma in piano, he decided to concentrate entirely on conducting and enrolled in the conducting classes of Franco Ferrara in Bologna, Siena and Venice and also worked with Sergiu Celibadache in Stuttgart and Paris.