PRESENTING SPONSOR

Meet the Conductor

Now in his thirteenth season as music director & conductor for both Coachella Valley Symphony and Buddy Rogers Youth Symphony, Christian was born in Syracuse, New York, where he had his first piano lessons from the church organist across the street at age seven. For his ninth birthday, his grandmother took him on the train down to New York City to see and hear one of Leonard Bernstein's famous Young Peoples
Concerts with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, including a backstage visit to meet his favorite conductor. This visit totally planted
the seed for everything since. After three sporadiac years at the piano in Syracuse and then in Alaska where his family moved in 1963,
Christian turned his attention to the harp in 1977 when he met the late legendary pop harp virtuoso, Lloyd Lindroth. After just fourteen months at his new instrument, Christian placed third in the 2nd Annual Pop & Jazz Harp Festival in Santa Barbara, and embarked on a "self-inflicted whirlwind tour of the planet" - on cruise ships and hotels the world over.

In 1994, Christian moved to the Desert from Japan, where he continued to freelance with his harp. Jeannette Banoczi soon discovered him through the grapevine, and in September 1995 Thomas E. Mancini passed the baton over to Christian for the newly re-established Coachella Valley Symphony, and the brand new Buddy Rogers Youth Symphony.

Maestro Chalifour has also been active in various community theater endevours, including serving as musical director for West Coast Opera's
production of South Pacific at the McCallum Theatre, Theater Mirage's Oliver!, and for several seasons with Karen Schultz and On Stage
Theater Company multiple productions of Annie, Oliver!, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Big River, Fiddler on the Roof, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Cinderella at the McCallum Theatre, and also in Orange County and Long Beach. Christian has received several Desert Theater League nominations, and one award for Outstanding Musical Director for Annie, and also the 2001 Bill Kulhman Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Christian lives in Thousand Palms, California, where he continues to freelance with the harp when he's not busy on the podium and working on music at home. His one pop harp album, "It's About Time!" was released in 1997.