Frederick Harris, Jr. is the conductor of the MIT Wind Ensemble. In 1999, he formed the ensemble at MIT. Harris is also the director of MIT's Festival Jazz Ensemble.
He was born in New Hampshire and earned a master's degree from the New England Conservatory of Music. His teachers have included Frank Battisti, Gunther Schuller, and Craig Kirchhoff. He earned his PhD from the University of Minnesota. He has served as guest conductor of the New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra, and also conducted during summers at Tanglewood.
Harris has commissioned more than 52 new pieces for various ensembles. He also brings musicians to MIT to play and work with his ensembles, including greats such as Ran Blake, Herb Pomeroy, Arni Cheatham, John Funkhouser, John Harbison, and Mark Harvey.
Harris has written the official biography of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. [1]
He lives in Boxborough, MA, with his wife, Becky, and their daughters, Abbie and Sadie [2]
Dean Lawrence Kamen is an American engineer, inventor, and businessman. He is known for his invention of the Segway and iBOT, as well as founding the non-profit organization FIRST with Woodie Flowers. Kamen holds over 1,000 patents.
Stanislaw Pawel Stefan Jan Sebastian Skrowaczewski was a Polish-American classical conductor and composer.
Tan Dun is a Chinese-born American composer and conductor. A leading figure of contemporary classical music, he draws from a variety of Western and Chinese influences, a dichotomy which has shaped much of his life and music. Having collaborated with leading orchestras around the world, Tan is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Grawemeyer Award for his opera Marco Polo (1996) and both an Academy Award and Grammy Award for his film score in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). His oeuvre as a whole includes operas, orchestral, vocal, chamber, solo and film scores, as well as genres that Tan terms "organic music" and "music ritual."
Kenneth Amis is a Bermudian tuba player and composer best known for his association with the Empire Brass. He is also the assistant conductor of the MIT Wind Ensemble, a group he has been involved with since its creation in 1999. In addition, as of 2005, Amis is an Affiliated Artist of MIT.
Paul Schuyler Phillips is an American conductor, composer and music scholar. He is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies, and Professor of Music at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Philharmonia, and Stanford Summer Symphony. He maintains an international career as a guest conductor and composer. As a scholar, he is best known for his writings on Igor Stravinsky and Anthony Burgess.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Albany, New York.
Richard Bernas is a British-based conductor.
George Daugherty is an American conductor, director, producer, and writer.
Rodney Waschka II is an American composer known for his algorithmic compositions and his theatrical works.
David Alan Miller is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American symphony orchestra conductor, and since 1992, music director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Miller served as assistant and associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1987–92 and music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1982-88. He is currently also Artistic Advisor to both the Sarasota Orchestra and to The Little Orchestra Society in New York City.
The Dubuque Symphony Orchestra is a non-union, fully professional orchestra located in Dubuque, Iowa. It serves the residents of Dubuque and its surrounding tri-state area which includes 12 counties in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. Under Music Director William Intriligator, over 75 professional musicians perform a repertoire of classical, chamber, opera and pops concerts each year. The DSO performs an average of 12 different concerts a year with a total of 25 performances.
Paul Hostetter is an American conductor, the Ethel Foley Distinguished Chair in Orchestral Activities for the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University, the Conductor and Artistic Advisor for the Sequitur Ensemble, and the Founder and Artistic Adviser to the Music Mondays chamber series in New York City. He has held appointments as the Director of the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University where he also was the Director of Orchestral Studies/Associate Professor, the Music Director of the Colonial Symphony, the Music Director of the High Mountain Symphony, Artistic Director of the Winter Sun Music Festival, Music Director of the New Jersey Youth Symphony, and the Associate Conductor for the Broadway productions of Candide and George and Ira Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm.
John Serry Jr. is an American jazz pianist and composer, as well as a composer of contemporary classical music works that feature percussion, on which he also doubles. He is a son of the accordionist and composer John Serry. His debut solo album was 'Exhibition', for which he received a Grammy Nomination for his composition, 'Sabotage'.
Paul Joseph Christiansen was an American choral conductor and composer. As the youngest son of F. Melius Christiansen, he was brought up into the Lutheran Choral Tradition and quickly developed his own style of conducting and composing that furthered the tradition started by his father. He spent the bulk of his career developing The Concordia Choir and conducted the choir from 1937-1986. He is also credited with establishing the Concordia Christmas Concert which is seen yearly by more than 30,000 people.
Founded as the Lexington Sinfonietta in 1995 by conductor Hisao Watanabe, the Lexington Symphony is a group of musicians from the Lexington, Massachusetts, area.
Sherman Friedland was Associate Professor of Fine Arts as well as an active clarinetist, professor of music and conductor at Concordia University in Montreal from 1960 until his retirement in 1997. He was conductor and Music Director of the Concordia University Symphony for 17 years, and was clarinetist, director and founder of the Concordia Chamber Players. Sherman Friedland died January 26, 2017.
Alan Emanuel Pierson is an American conductor. His parents are Elaine Pierson and Edward S. Pierson, the latter an engineering professor at Purdue University Calumet. In Chicago Pierson took piano and composition lessons at the People's Music School, graduating high school at Francis W. Parker. Pierson is a 1996 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in music and physics. At MIT, he was a timpanist and an assistant conductor with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and also a composer.
Charles Witto-witto Cawthorne was a businessman who, with his father founded Cawthorne and Co, music publishers and retailers in Adelaide, South Australia. He was a proficient musician and important in the history of orchestral music of Adelaide.
Jonathan Stockhammer is an American conductor based in Germany.
The Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra was the only symphonic orchestral ensemble ever created under the supervision of the United States Army. Founded by the composer Samuel Adler, its members participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in an effort to demonstrate the shared cultural heritage of the United States, its European allies and the vanquished countries of Europe during the post World War II era.