Jacinto Carlos Gimbernard Pellerano, born in Santo Domingo on 17 September 1931 and died there on 24 May 2017, was a Dominican violinist, conductor, diplomat and writer who became the youngest concertmaster in the history of the National Symphony Orchestra (OSN).

A child prodigy

He began violin at seven under Willy Kleinberg, Danilo Belardinelli and Ernesto Leroux, joined the OSN at thirteen as its youngest-ever member, and became its concertmaster at nineteen, a post he held for more than thirty years. As a soloist he performed concertos by Bach, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and others, including Beethoven’s at the 1956 inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes and Chausson’s «Poème» at the Teatro Nacional’s opening concert in 1973.

Diplomat and institution-builder

He served as cultural attaché in London and ambassador to France, directed the Teatro Nacional, and later became the OSN’s music director, the first to travel abroad specifically to audition and hire foreign musicians for the orchestra. He taught violin at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música for 24 years, and in 2015 the Teatro Nacional named one of its rehearsal halls after him.

A parallel career in letters

A largely self-taught polyglot, Gimbernard was also a prolific writer: his «Historia de Santo Domingo» (1966) served as an official Ministry of Education textbook for more than a decade, and his novel «Medalaganario» (1980) went through four editions. He also produced the television program «Música de los Grandes Maestros» with the pianist Vicente Grisolía before hosting a daily radio program on music education.

Legacy

Gimbernard died of a heart attack in his sleep in 2017, remembered as much for building the institutions of Dominican classical music — as concertmaster, orchestra director and educator — as for his own violin.