Advisory Council

James Allen Anderson is the Director of Orchestral Activities and Music Director of the University of Delaware’s Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, and Opera Theatre. He received his formal training as conductor and pianist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. His principal conducting mentors include David Effron, Mark Gibson, Tonu Kalam, Pierre Hetu and Otto Werner-Mueller, with studies in piano under Michael Zenge and Francis Whang.
 

His commitment to new music developed early in his career and led to collaborations with composers such as Joseph Schwantner, Augusta Read Thomas, Michael Daugherty, Libby Larsen, David Liptak and Robert Moore. In 1997, as part of Eastman’s 75th anniversary, Mr. Anderson was selected to conduct the world premiere performance of the newly revised Overture in Praise of Folly by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker. This commitment to new music endures, with recent world premiere performances of works by William Harbinson (Of Fire and Ice), David Maslanka (11:11 A Dance at the Edge of the World, Symphony No. 6 “Living Earth”; A Child’s Garden of Dreams: Book 2) and Daniel Bukvich (The Glittering Hill). Recordings are available under the Albany Records label.

James Allen Anderson has held positions with the Eastman Opera Theatre, Triangle Opera (NC), Theater on the Ridge (NY), Pauper Players (NC), Appalachian State University’s Hayes School of Music, and the University of Montana’s Music Department.

Dr. Anderson is in demand as a guest conductor, having worked with a variety of ensembles in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He has served as Music Director of the Butte Symphony Association and Director of Orchestral Activities at Appalachian State University and the University of Montana. He remains committed to a variety of outreach projects and is a frequent adjudicator and clinician on both the state and national levels.

Dr. Anderson and the Appalachian Symphony Orchestra were both finalist in the 2010 American Prize in Orchestral Conducting and Performance. Maestro Anderson received the 2005 Miriam Cannon Hayes School of Music Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2003, he was selected by the American Symphony Orchestra League to participate in the National Conductor Preview with the Jacksonville Symphony (FL). This program showcased eight conductors that had been “carefully chosen for their talent, accomplishments, and qualifications, who are ready to assume important professional conducting responsibilities with American orchestras.” In 2001, he competed in the first Vakhtang Jordania/New Millennium International Conducting Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine and “was a Third-Round diploma laureate and major prize winner.”

A published author, articles have appeared in the BACH journal and the Journal of the Conductors Guild. She also serves as a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of the Conductors Guild in the position of President elect.

Ms. Brown studied conducting and cello at the Royal College of Music in London, England where she was twice winner of the Sir Adrian Boult Conducting Prize. Her major teachers have included Leonard Slatkin, Herbert Blomstedt, Franco Ferrara, and David Effron.

EXCERPTS FROM CONCERT REVIEWS

“Brown extracted from her orchestra a white heat intensity” (Mozart Symphony No. 38 in D major, the “Prague”) “and gave a finely conceived performance of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin” (Syracuse, NY).

[The performance]…”was led with unobtrusive and constantly attentive expertise…it would be hard to imagine [a performance of The Soldier’s Tale] more impressive in the perfection of every detail, musical, theatrical and otherwise” (Syracuse, NY).

“…a dazzling young conductor…” (Rochester, NY)

“In Ravel’s La Valse the masestra, with clear concept of her objectives, looked for the key passages of the complex orchestral organism, bringing out individually and collectively the themes and instrumental falies. She recreated in this way the dark or glowing atmosphere of the piece, always within the pulse of the waltz, root of all colorful “Raveliana”. An excellent result, one that the audience rewarded both the orchestra and the conductor enthusiastically …not less deserving of the ovation was the outstanding work of the conductor Freeman obtaining a great number of nuances and exact synchronization…” [Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto]. (EL MERCURIO, Santiago, Chile)

“Beginning the program with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 we noticed in Ms. Freeman Brown a great number of virtues and talents. From the detail and moderation we got a reading as neat as it was clean, careful in all its details … The climax, without a doubt, was the performance of Ravel’s La Valse, closing the program. This great symphonic poem … so appropriate to measure orchestras and conductors, was confronted by Ms. Freeman Brown with the same detailed work … a magnificent result. In all, the great orchestral mass responded in magnificent shape to a fine baton, flawless and without any histrionics”. (LA EPOCA, Santiago, Chile)

 

    Michael Charry, Guild President: 1991-1992

Born in New York City, Mr. Charry studied piano and oboe at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and received Bachelor and Master of Science Degrees in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School of Music in the class of Jean Morel. His other conducting teachers were Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt in Hamburg, Germany, and Pierre Monteux at his school for conductors in Maine. For nine years Mr. Charry was assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell, whose biography he has written and will be published by the University of Illinois Press in the summer of 2011.

Other past positions include Music Director of the Nashville (Tennessee) and Canton (Ohio) Symphonies, and the Peninsula Music Festival (Wisconsin). He has been a guest conductor of the orchestras of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Dallas, Syracuse, Louisville, San Antonio, and Kansas City; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Belgian BRT, Vancouver CBC and Swiss Radio Orchestras, the Singapore Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of the State of Mexico.

Opera credits include the New York City, Santa Fe, and San Francisco Spring Operas, Kansas City Lyric Theater, Lake Erie Opera Theater (with the Cleveland Orchestra), Lake George Opera Festival, Netherlands Opera, Holland Festival, and the Boston Lyric Opera. He has conducted for the José Limón Dance Company in the United States, South and Central America, Europe, and the Far East and, in the US, for the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Mr. Charry was Music Director of the Mannes Orchestra and head of Orchestral Conducting at the Mannes College of Music in New York City from 1989 to 1999. In October 1990 he conducted the Mannes Orchestra at the Kennedy Center and in June 1995, led the Mannes Chamber Orchestra in eight concerts in France. Mr. Charry and the Mannes Orchestra were recipients of an ASCAP award for adventuresome programming of contemporary music. Mr. Charry remains on the Mannes part-time faculty, teaching courses in conducting, preparation for orchestra auditions for graduate instrumentalists, and seminars on 20th Century orchestra and opera repertoire.

In addition to Mannes, Mr. Charry has also held faculty positions at Boston University and its Tanglewood Institute, Syracuse University, and The Juilliard School. A past president of the Conductors’ Guild, other honors include a Fulbright Scholarship, grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Foundation, the Elizabeth Ring Mather and William Gwinn Mather Fund, and the Alice M. Ditson Conductor's Award of Columbia University for service to American Music.

Mr. Charry lives in New York City, and Maine.

 

     Sandra Dackow, Guild President: 2007-2008   

Sandra Dackow holds a Bachelor and a Master of Music, as well as the Doctor of Philosophy from the Eastman School of Music. An Aspen Conducting fellow in 2001, she was also awarded the Silver Medal in the 2001 Vakhtang Jordania/New Millennium International Conducting Competition in Kharkov, Ukraine. She is currently serving as Music Director of the Hershey Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania and is a former Music Director of the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey. Recent guest conducting has included appearances with the Berkshire Symphony, Massachusetts, Missouri Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Butler Symphony, Pennsylvania and Kharkov Philharmonic, Ukraine. This season will see, among others, performances with the Helena Symphony, Montana, Kharkov Philharmonic and the All-Queensland Honors Orchestra in Brisbane, Australia.
A Native of East Paterson (Elmwood Park), New Jersey, Dr. Dackow has conducted bands and orchestras in the schools of Glen Rock and East Brunswick, New Jersey, and served as Supervisor of Music for the Ridgewood NJ public schools. She was a member of the faculty of Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and has been a visiting faculty member during the summer sessions of the Eastman School of Music, Temple University, Montclair State College NJ, Wichita State University, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and the Cork School of Music, Ireland. She most recently served on the faculty of Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, as director of the University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble.

An annual ASCAP award winning arranger, Dr. Dackow has generated over seventy works for young orchestras and is active as a guest conductor, adjudicator and clinician across the nation and Canada, in England, Hong Kong, South Africa and throughout Australia and Ireland. Articles of hers have appeared in major professional journals and she has contributed to or co authored reference books and texts.

 

 

Tonu Kalam, born of Estonian parents, has lived in the United States since the age of two. He was trained as a conductor, pianist and composer at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Curtis Institute of Music, his major teachers having been conductor Max Rudolf and composers Leon Kirchner and Andrew Imbrie. His summer credits include fellowships at Tanglewood and Aspen as well as many years at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he conducted the Beethoven Choral Fantasy on five occasions at the invitation of legendary pianist Rudolf Serkin.

He has guest conducted the North Carolina Symphony, the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, and the East Texas Symphony Orchestra, among others, and has served as Music Director of the New England Chamber Orchestra in Boston. He was a prizewinner in the first Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Young Conductor’s Competition and was also a finalist in the prestigious Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program.

In 1994 Mr. Kalam made his European debut conducting the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Tallinn and he was immediately reengaged for festival appearances the following year. He returned to Europe in 1997 to guest conduct Finland’s Oulu Symphony Orchestra and in 2004 he made his fourth Estonian appearance in the “Tubin and His Time” festival. He has collaborated with artists such as Gil Shaham, Lang Lang, Christine Goerke, Anthony Dean Griffey, Anton Kuerti, Seymour Lipkin, Roman Totenberg and Phyllis Curtin.

Tonu Kalam has conducted over 135 opera performances for companies such as the Shreveport Opera, the Lake George Opera Festival, and the Nevada Opera. For seven years he was Music Director of the Illinois Opera Theatre at the University of Illinois and he has also filled short-term visiting faculty appointments as director of the orchestra programs at the University of Miami in Florida and St. Olaf College in Minnesota. As an educator, he has guest conducted at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and has led all-state, all-region and all-county orchestras in New York, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, Louisiana, and Montana. From 2008 to 2012 he also worked regularly with the Mallarmé Youth Chamber Orchestra in North Carolina.

In 1984 Mr. Kalam began a long-term association with the renowned Kneisel Hall summer chamber music festival in Blue Hill, Maine, where he spent 13 years in various administrative and musical capacities, as Executive Director, Summer Program Director, Artist-Faculty pianist, and chamber music coach. He continues to perform regularly as a pianist and chamber musician in addition to his conducting activities.

Presently he is a Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, serving as Music Director and Conductor of the UNC Symphony Orchestra. Under his leadership, the UNCSO was named the 2012 first-place winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Performance—College/University Division. For 25 years Mr. Kalam concurrently held the position of Music Director and Conductor of the Longview Symphony Orchestra in Texas, where he commuted for several concerts each season. Since 2001 he has also frequently served as a cover conductor for the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh. Having served 10 years on the board of directors of the Conductors Guild, including a term as president, he is now a member of the Advisory Council of that organization, which is devoted to the advancement of the art of conducting and to serving the artistic and professional needs of conductors worldwide.

Now in his fifteenth season as Music Director of the Fort Collins Symphony, Wes Kenney has become a musical fixture in Northern Colorado, conducting orchestra concerts, opera and dance productions. Opera Fort Collins named him to the additional post as their Music Director in 2004, and he immediately helped the now 32 year old company establish a full season of three productions a season. Last fall, Mr. Kenney was named educator of the year by the Colorado Chapter of the American String Teachers Association. Previously he was awarded the Grand Prize in the Summer 2007 Varna (Bulgaria) International Conducting Competition. He traveled back to Bulgaria in March 2008 for concerts in Vidin and to conduct La Traviata in Stara Zagora.

Mr. Kenney is a frequent guest conductor of professional and educational ensembles. He has appeared recently with the Alabama All-State Orchestra, the Virginia Symphony, the Symphony of Southeast Texas, the Vallejo (CA) Symphony and the New Mexico All-State Orchestra. Over the past five seasons Maestro Kenney has guest conducted at the Edinburgh Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Buffalo Philharmonic, returned to the New Mexico Symphony for tours and performances of The Nutcracker.

Other recent appearances include the Richmond Symphony, the Long Beach Symphony, the Alabama Symphony, the San Juan Symphony, and the Virginia All-State Honor Orchestra. He has also appeared with the Dubuque Symphony, Savannah Symphony, Sewanee Music Festival, Spokane Symphony, Virginia Ballet Theater, Norfolk Chamber Consort, Coastal Valleys Symphony, Universal Ballet Korea, Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, the Williamsburg Symphonia (VA), the Acadiana Symphony (LA).the Virginia Chorale.

In six seasons as the Virginia Symphony’s Associate Conductor, Mr. Kenney appeared more than 350 times with that orchestra. He was responsible for the programming and conducting of Subscription, Pops, Family and Young People’s Concerts.

Mr. Kenney was Co-principal Conductor of the Oakland Lyric Opera for four seasons and Music Director of the Virginia Ballet Theater. Awarded the prestigious Carmen Dragon Conducting Prize in 1992, Wes Kenney served as Music Director of the Oakland Youth Orchestra for five seasons.

Mr. Kenney has also enjoyed success directing from the orchestra pit for opera, ballet, and musical theater. In the last nine years he has conducted productions of Aida, Barber of Seville, La Boheme, Cavalleria Rusticana, Carmen, Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Fledermaus, Madama Butterfly, Marriage of Figaro, The Merry Widow, I Pagliacci, Rigoletto, Street Scene, Tenderland, Tosca, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Turandot, Die Zauberflote,. He has appeared as conductor for Gianni Schicchi and Die Kluge for Oakland Lyric Opera. In addition he has conducted numerous performances of The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Firebird, and many other dance works.

Mr. Kenney is a past president of the Conductors Guild, a 2000 member service organization to the conducting profession. He currently is on the Guild’s advisory board. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and San Francisco State University. Additional studies include three years as a fellow at the Conductors Institute, several American Symphony Orchestra League and Conductors Guild Workshops, and the Sandpoint Festival. His teachers include Harold Farberman, Hans Beer, Gunther Schuller, Hans Swarovsky and Miltiardes Carides.

 

Harlan D. Parker is the conductor of The Peabody Wind Ensemble and Coordinator of the Music Education Division at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and the Music Director/Conductor of the Peabody Youth Orchestra in the Peabody Preparatory Division. Under his direction, the Peabody Wind Ensemble has given over 30 world premieres, and has performed at state, regional and national conventions and is considered “among the very top wind bands in the US” (Fanfare Magazine).

The Peabody Wind Ensemble appears on the Naxos label with three CDs; the first, Orff, Bird and Reed, appeared in August 2006. Of the performance of La Fiesta Mexicana on the recording, composer H. Owen Reed writes, “I have just listened, twice, to your brilliant recording of my La Fiesta Mexicana, and I must tell you that it was a thrill to hear my music performed exactly as I always hoped for. Your total understanding of the work showed up on all parameters. Your tempos were on the mark, and the overall conception of the work was superb.” The Orff, Bird and Reed CD was also listed as one of the “Best of the Year Discs for 2006” by Audiophile Audition. The second CD, Collage: A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Peabody Institute: 1857 – 2007, was the top classical music download (out of more than 12,000 CDs) on eMusic.com for the first half of April 2007. Their third CD for Naxos, Trendsetters, was released in the summer of 2009, and the Peabody Wind Ensemble is currently recording The Symphonies of Johan de Meij for the Naxos label.

Dr. Parker is a Past-President of The Conductors Guild, and is also a member The American Bandmasters Association, an organization whose membership is by invitation and recognizes “outstanding achievement in the field of the concert band and its music.” He is active regionally, nationally and internationally as a guest conductor, conducting pedagogue, clinician and adjudicator, having worked with professional musicians and students from all 50 states and over 40 countries.

In his first year as a faculty member at Peabody, Dr. Parker reorganized the Peabody Wind Ensemble in its present format after several years of non-existence and was awarded the Peabody Student Council Faculty/Administration Award for outstanding contributions to the Peabody Community. In the fall of 2000, Dr. Parker accepted the first graduate class of Wind Conducting students. Graduates and students of the program are teachers and conductors in high schools and colleges and military bands, with two recent Masters students accepting positions as conductors with the United States Air Force. Dr. Parker received his Bachelor of Music from Emporia State University and his Master of Music and Doctor of Philosophy in Music Education with an emphasis in Conducting from the University of Kansas and has completed post-doctoral work at the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York.

Internationally acclaimed American conductor Leonard Slatkin began his tenure as Music Director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in September of 2008. In addition to his post at the DSO, he serves as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Lyon (ONL), France, an appointment which began in August of 2011. He is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, a post that began in the fall of 2008, and is the author of a new book entitled Conducting Business.

Following a 17-year appointment as Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Slatkin became Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. in 1996. Other positions in the United States have included Principal Guest Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, where he founded their Sommerfest; first Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s summer series at the Blossom Music Festival, an appointment he held for nine years; Principal Guest Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl for three seasons; and additional positions with the New Orleans Philharmonic and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. In Great Britain he served as Principal Guest Conductor of both the Philharmonia Orchestra of London and the Royal Philharmonic, and was also Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Since his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1974, Mr. Slatkin has led virtually all of the world’s leading orchestras including those of Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Cleveland, Minnesota and Philadelphia. European orchestras include the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, Bayerische Rundfunk and all the prominent ensembles in Paris and London. He has also appeared on podiums throughout the Far East and is a regular guest at major summer festivals such as Aspen, Tanglewood, Ravinia, and Saratoga.

Opera performances have taken him to many of the leading stages in the U.S. and abroad, including the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Theater of St. Louis, the Santa Fe Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera Bastille, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Stuttgart Opera, and the Washington National Opera.

Recently he has enjoyed return appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Seoul Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Orquesta Nacional de Madrid. His engagements for the 2012-2013 season include the NHK Symphony, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic, the St. Louis Symphony, the Nashville Symphony and the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia.

Leonard Slatkin’s more than 100 recordings have been recognized with seven Grammy awards and 64 nominations. He has recorded with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Saint Louis, Nashville and Chicago, as well as the New York Philharmonic, the Minnesota Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and all of the major London orchestras as well as those in Munich, Paris, Lyon, Prague, Stockholm and Berlin.

Throughout his career, Mr. Slatkin has demonstrated a continuing commitment to arts education and to reaching diverse audiences. He was the founder, and for nine seasons director, of the National Conducting Institute, an advanced career development program for rising conductors. Mr. Slatkin also founded the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra, and he continues to work with student orchestras throughout the world.

Mr. Slatkin has received many honors and awards, including the 2003 National Medal of Arts (the highest award given to artists by the United States Government), the Chevalierof the Legion of Honor, the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Gold Baton for service to American music, ASCAP awards with both the National and Saint Louis Symphonies, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards, and the prestigious Declaration of Honor in Silver from the Austrian ambassador to the United States for outstanding contributions to cultural relations. Mr. Slatkin is the Arthur R. Metz Foundation Conductor at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, and beginning with the 2007-2008 season, the Distinguished Artist in Residence at the American University. He has received honorary doctorates from many institutions including his alma mater, the Julliard School, Indiana University, Michigan State University, Washington University in St. Louis, and Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Born in Los Angeles to a distinguished musical family, his parents were the conductor-violinist Felix Slatkin and cellist Eleanor Aller, founding members of the famed Hollywood String Quartet. Mr. Slatkin began his musical studies on the violin and studied conducting with his father, followed by Walter Susskind at Aspen and Jean Morel at The Juilliard School. He is the proud parent of a son, Daniel, who attends the University of Southern California. He is married to composer, Cindy McTee, and they reside in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

 

Jonathan Sternberg, Honorary Life Member
- in memorium

Jonathan Sternberg (b New York, 27 July 1919, d Philadelphia, 8 May 2018). American conductor. After studying the violin as a child at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School) in New York, Sternberg took an academic degree at New York University (1939), followed by studies in musicology at NYU Graduate School and Harvard. During his undergraduate years, he was active as a New York critic for the Musical Leader of Chicago; he also attended rehearsals of the National Orchestral Association conducted by Leon Barzin, from whom he acquired his conducting technique. Apart from two later private sessions with Barzin (1946) and two summers with Pierre Monteux (1946 1947), he was self taught.