Pedro Oviedo | Executive & Music director

Pedro is a Paraguayan violist and conductor with vast experience in music education and string pedagogy. As Executive Director & Music Director of the Itasca Orchestra and Strings Program, he leads the organization as a whole — its operations, partnerships, and fundraising — while serving as conductor of the Itasca Symphony Orchestra and directing the strings program.

Oviedo is a former instructor of the string methods class for future music educators at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has served as a private instructor, orchestra coach, and orchestra conductor for Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras' Music Makers, a program that provides opportunities for instrumental lessons and orchestra experience to underserved populations in the Madison, WI area. From 2022 to 2024, he also served as conductor of the Duluth Superior Youth Symphony Orchestra.

He is the former conductor of the All-University String Orchestra at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has been a guest conductor for the UW–Madison Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Juvenil Curanilahue (Chile), VerArte Music Camp Orchestra (Peru), and the Wichita State University Symphony Orchestra.

As a violist, he has collaborated with several professional orchestras, including as Associate Principal Viola of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR), and with the Uninorte Symphony Orchestra (Paraguay), the National Symphony Orchestra of Paraguay, the Asunción City Symphony (Paraguay), the Centro de Conocimiento Symphony (Argentina), Orchestra Crescendo (Germany), the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, Ohio Light Opera, and the Itasca Symphony Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, Oviedo is a prize winner of a number of competitions.

Passionate about the transformative impact of music in society, he is a graduate of the prestigious Global Leaders Program, where he earned an executive graduate certificate focused on social service, innovation, pedagogy, organizational management, and entrepreneurship.

Oviedo is a co-founder of the Third Coast Chamber Collective, established to spark creative expression and empower underserved communities through educational, collaborative, and commissioning chamber music outreach projects.