Music Director - Don Marino

Over the past 47 years, Don Marino has enjoyed a respected career as a music educator, a professional conductor, and a performing bassist.  He is currently the Band Director at Chaparral High School in Temecula and is very excited to, once again, be teaching high school after spending the past 23 years as an Associate Professor of Music at Marymount College in Palos Verdes.

 

Prior to that, Mr. Marino taught for 19 years in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, the last 11 of those years at Palos Verdes High School, where he raised the instrumental music department to one of the most highly regarded high school music programs in Southern California.  The first 8 years of his 43 year teaching career were spent teaching music at the Intermediate School level.

 

 Also, during that time, for 12 years, Mr. Marino was the musical director and conductor of the Southwest Youth Symphony Orchestra which was recognized as one of the most outstanding youth orchestras in Los Angeles County.  In 1985, he was awarded “High School Teacher of the Year” by the school district.

 

Next to teaching, Professor Marino mostly has enjoyed conducting more than 250 concerts, musicals, operas and ballets in the Southern California area and has conducted at famous venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Center, the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and Royce Hall at UCLA.  Mr. Marino has been fortunate to lead moth musical and non-performing groups to exciting places such as Europe and New York City, NY.

 

 In recent times, one of the most enjoyable experiences was performing as a clown in Christina Aguilera’s video of the song, “Hurt”.

 

Mr. Marino has been married to his wife, Juanita, for 52 years.  They have 3 sons (two who are professional musicians and conductors), 6 grandchildren and 2 new great-grandchildren.  He is a big sports fan, especially baseball (Go, Angels!) and the Lakers. 

 

 He is very honored and thrilled to be the new Music Director of the Inland Valley Youth Symphony.