Salomé Martínez Lutz (President and Artistic Director) is the most recent winner of the Albuquerque Arts Alliance 2008 Bravos Award for Excellence in Theatre, and the New Mexico Hispanic Entertainers Award for Best Director in the 2007 season. She holds a B.A. in Theatre Education and an M.A. in Theatre Arts and is an awardwinning singer and actor with extensive experience. As Artistic Director of Teatro Nuevo Mexico, she co-produces the Patty Disney Zarzuela Series with the NHCC.

She attended Juilliard School of Music Graduate Extension Division, debuted at Carnegie Recital Hall, and earned her Actor’s Equity, Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, professional memberships. She was a principal singer/actor for five years with the four-time OBIE award-winning Repertorio Español; she performed on the East Coast from NY to Miami, including appearances at the Alice Tulley Hall and Avery Fisher Hall.

 As a playwright, she has written three full-length bilingual plays including a children’s play which toured México for which she received the National Reader’s Digest Award for Playwriting and the United Nations Medallion for Contributions to the Theatre. Ms. Martinez Lutz has received numerous awards for her teaching.

 
José Garcia Davis (Vice President), an accomplished theatre, film, and visual artist, has lived in Los Angeles since 1994, and is very happy to be performing again in his home town of Albuquerque. He last performed here in 2007 in his musical play The Magdalena Cantata, another production of Teatro Nuevo México and the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and directed Coyolxauhqui ReMembers, a dance drama by the Latina Dance Project that premiered at the NHCC

in 2006. In February 2008, he premiered his newest one-person show, The Devil and 40 Chickens, at the Vancouver International Storytelling Festival. He has performed, directed, written, and taught nationally and internationally with numerous productions and companies, and has been Director of Theatre for Environmental Awareness in China and Artistic Director of several other theatre companies. New Mexico audiences may remember his critically acclaimed productions Tito, Día de Visitaciones, and The Unwanted.

 
Nelly Maria Kirmer (Board Member) has a Bachelor of Science in Spanish from UCLA and she appeared in numerous roles throughout the Southwest and Panama. She began acting in religious plays at the age of six in her native Panama. She has performed with Opera Southwest, the Albuquerque Civic Light Opera, La Zarzuela de Alburquerque, Teatro Nuevo México, Música Romántica, Pan-American Roundtable Plays, and the John D. Robb Musical Trust. She is currently working in Trade Practices mediation and arbitrations.  She is Interim Secretary of TNM.

 
Pablo Zinger, born in Uruguay and living in New York since 1976, he holds a Bachelor of Music and Master of Music Degrees from Manhattan School of Music, where he studied piano with Zenon Fishbein. Pablo Zinger is widely known as a conductor, pianist, writer, composer, arranger, lecturer and narrator, specializing in the music of Astor Piazzolla, tango, Spanish zarzuela, and Latin American vocal and instrumental music. He has conducted and played with orchestras, singers and chamber groups throughout the Americas and in Spain, Russia, Poland, Slovenia, Japan, South Africa, Germany and Norway.

In 2006 he conducted the premiere in Moscow of Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, in 2005, the closing segment of Paquito D’Rivera’s Carnegie Hall 50th. Anniversary Concert and in 2008 Paquito’s concerts with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra in the Canary Islands. He tours and records frequently with the Nuevo Tango Zinger Septet (Valencia, Spain). In 2008 he debuted as a narrator in Tokyo’s Opera City, to rave reviews.

His critically acclaimed CD’s include Tango Apasionado with Astor Piazzolla, Chamber Music from the South and the Grammy nominated, The Clarinetist with Paquito D’Rivera, Las Puertas de la Mañana (songs of Carlos Guastavino), and two albums of Carlos Suriñach. Mr. Zinger has written for The New York Times, Opera News, Guitar Review and Classical Singer, and has lectured for The New York Philharmonic.

He is considered the pre-eminent conductor of zarzuela in the U.S. Since 2004 he is Musical Director of the Patty Disney Zarzuela Series at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, directed by Salomé Martínez Lutz in Albuquerque, NM.

At New York’s Town Hall, he conducted Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires and Pueblo Joven (U.S. première), Lecuona’s María la O, Roig’s Cecilia Valdés, Moreno Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda and Barbieri’s El barberillo de Lavapiés. Other zarzuela credits: Spanish Repertory Theatre (1980-1994), Orlando Opera, Zarzuela Company Domingo-Embil (Mexico) International Zarzuela Festival (El Paso), Jarvis Conservatory (Napa), and Santa Barbara Grand Opera.

His La Verbena de la Paloma (El Paso, ‘96) was seen nationally on PBS and his Luisa Fernanda (Napa, ‘97) was issued on CD and DVD. Maestro Zinger has also conducted the Costa Rica National Symphony, Simón Bolívar Orchestra (Venezuela), Maribor Philharmonic (Slovenia), Cosmopolitan Symphony Orchestra (NYC), Montevideo Philharmonic and Montevideo Pro Opera (Uruguay) and Bronx Arts Ensemble with Jazz greats Tito Puente, Dave Valentin, Néstor Torres and John Faddis. As Musical Director of New York’s Polish Theatre Institute, Mr. Zinger has conducted Polish operas, concerts and cabaret presentations throughout the U.S. and Poland.