ASOL Press Release
June 7, 2007

AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA LEAGUE ANNOUNCES FIVE NEW AMERICAN CONDUCTING FELLOWS

League’s Professional Development Program Places Rising Young Conductors in Residence with Major Orchestras Across the Country

NEW YORK — The American Symphony Orchestra League has announced the newest class of the American Conducting Fellows Program, a professional development program that places promising young conductors with American orchestras for in-depth residencies aimed at preparing them for the rigors of American music directorships. Each of the five new Fellows will participate in a rich variety of activities, both on the conductors’ podium and off, over the course of a 2-to-3-year residency with a host orchestra. The new group of American Conducting Fellows and their host orchestras comprises: Mei-Ann Chen, in residence with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Philip Mann in residence with the San Diego Symphony; Brett Mitchell, in residence with the Houston Symphony; Tito Muñoz, in residence with The Cleveland Orchestra; and Ward Stare, in residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Complete biographies for the five American Conducting Fellows are attached.

Intended for American conductors of exceptional talent on the threshold of professional careers, the League’s American Conducting Fellows Program was launched in 2004. The program supports the musical and leadership development of exceptionally talented conductors in the early stages of their professional careers, and aims to improve the qualifications of American conductors to assume leadership roles as music directors of American orchestras. The primary criteria for selection are musical talent, potential for continued growth, and generally no more than five years of professional conducting experience. The new group of American Conducting Fellows will begin working with their host orchestras in the fall of 2007.

“The League’s American Conducting Fellows Program was created to fill the gap in conductor training between university or conservatory training and a conductor’s readiness to take the podium of a professional orchestra,” said Jesse Rosen, the League’s Executive Vice President and Managing Director. “The level of musical talent among emerging conductors is remarkably high, and the League’s Conducting Fellows Program helps them acquire the specialized skills and broad understanding that are essential for professional careers as leaders of contemporary orchestras. The participating music directors at the host orchestras continue to be deeply committed to working with the next generation of musical leaders, and I applaud them for sharing their time and experience with the League Fellows so generously.”

About the American Conducting Fellows Program
Fellows are chosen through an audition process with the host orchestra that involves both conducting the orchestra and a series of interviews with the host orchestra’s music director, key members of the staff, orchestra musicians, and League staff. Musicians of each host orchestra are directly involved in the Fellow’s selection process. While conductors are selected with the input of all parties, the endorsement of the music director is vital to developing a strong mentorship.

Fellowships are custom-designed to suit the skill and experience level of the individual conductor and the host orchestra’s needs, thereby forming a stimulating learning environment as well as a mutually beneficial working relationship. Each residency lasts two to three years, to allow for immersion into the institution and its community.

League representatives visit host orchestras, where they work together with the artistic and other key staff, musicians, and music director in shaping individualized training programs, and the League also provides ongoing program support to both host orchestras and Fellows. In addition to acquiring meaningful podium time in rehearsals and performances, Fellows gain access to the areas of artistic planning, finance, marketing, public relations, development, and administrative services as well as board and volunteer relations to help develop their skills and widen their knowledge of the orchestra industry. They also receive ongoing feedback from the members of the orchestra.

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra-Peabody Institute Conducting Fellowship
The impact of the program has already extended beyond its original parameters. In April 2007, the Baltimore Symphony announced the inauguration of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra-Peabody Institute Conducting Fellowship, a two-year program modeled after the League’s American Conducting Fellows Program. Beginning in the 2007-2008 season, the BSO with Music Director Marin Alsop and the Peabody Institute with Gustav Meier, in partnership with the League, will launch this innovative program, the first partnership of its kind in this country between a music conservatory and a symphony orchestra. The League played an important guiding role in helping the BSO and the Peabody Institute to develop a comprehensive program agenda and curriculum, and will assist with evaluation of the program during the pilot period. The BSO-Peabody Fellow is Joseph F. Young, 24, a music educator based in Central, South Carolina.

American Symphony Orchestra League
Founded in 1942, and chartered by Congress in 1962, the American Symphony Orchestra League leads, encourages, and supports America’s orchestras while communicating to the public the essential value and cultural importance of orchestras in their communities and the vitality of the music they perform. The League provides a wealth of services, meaningful information, learning and leadership opportunities, and grass-roots advocacy to its diverse membership, which encompasses nearly 1,000 member symphony, chamber, youth, and collegiate orchestras of all sizes, and links a national network of thousands of instrumentalists, conductors, managers, board members, volunteers, staff members, and business partners. Visit www.symphony.org to learn more.

The American Conducting Fellows Program is made possible by major grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation, and by the support of host orchestras.

Contact personnel at host orchestras:

Charlie Wade, Vice President, Marketing/Communications
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
(404) 733-4847; charlie.wade@woodruffcenter.org

Eileen Andrews Jackson, Vice President of Public Relations and Community Affairs
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
(703) 536-7806; ejackson@baltimoresymphony.org

Art Kent, Senior Director, Public Affairs
Houston Symphony
(713) 238-1492; art.kent@houstonsymphony.org

Adam Crane, Director of Public Relations & Communications
Los Angeles Philharmonic
(213) 972-3422; acrane@laphil.org

Stephen Kougias, Public Relations Manager
San Diego Symphony
(619) 235-0800 ext. 3951; skougias@sandiegosymphony.org

American Symphony Orchestra League
American Conducting Fellows Program
Conductor Biographies

Mei-Ann Chen, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Mei-Ann Chen’s international career was launched in 2005, when she became the first woman to win the international Malko Competition for Conductors in its 40-year history. Her engagements include appearances with the National, Seattle, Oregon, Eugene, and Toledo symphonies, Rochester Philharmonic, and Manhattan School of Music; symphonies throughout Denmark and Norway; Norrlands Opera in Sweden; and Taiwan National Symphony, as well as serving as a cover conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Chen just finished five memorable seasons as the Conductor and Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic in Oregon. Under her leadership, PYP gave its debut performance in Carnegie Hall, won an ASCAP Award for her creative programming, established new partnerships with Oregon Symphony and Chamber Music Northwest, and initiated wide-ranging new training programs for young musicians. In addition to her work as an educator, Chen served as Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony from 2003 to 2005, was showcased with Jacksonville Symphony in 2003 National Conductor Preview, and was a participant in 2002 National Conducting Institute. Chen received her DMA from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Kenneth Kiesler, a double Masters in Conducting/Violin, and a Bachelor in Violin from New England Conservatory. Chen came to the U.S. to study at NEC Preparatory on a violin scholarship offered to her during NEC’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra tour to Taiwan in 1989.

Philip Mann, San Diego Symphony
Philip Mann is gaining a reputation as a dynamic artist with orchestras and audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. He made his New York debut at Avery Fisher Hall and was in residence at the Salzburg Festival as the Vienna Philharmonic’s Karajan Fellow. In 2006, Mann joined the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra as Conducting Fellow. As a Rhodes Scholar in Oxford, he won the annual conductors’ competition and became principal conductor of the Oxford University Philharmonia. Active in symphonic and operatic repertory, he has served as music director of the Oxford City Opera and Oxford Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra/Oxford Pops. As an assistant conductor, he has worked with Leonard Slatkin, Roberto Abbado, Michael Stern, Mario Venzago, and Jaime Laredo. Mann studied with the Bolshoi Theater’s Music Director Alexander Vedernikov at the Moscow State Conservatory and with composer Robert Ward at the Conductor’s Institute at Spoleto. In 2007, he worked with Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra at the National Conducting Institute and with Michael Tilson Thomas at the New World Symphony. In England, he studied under Alan Hazeldine of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Colin Metters at the Royal Academy of Music, and Marios Papadopolous of the Oxford Philomusica. At Indiana University, Mann was appointed visiting lecturer in orchestral conducting and served as assistant conductor of the Opera Theater and Festival Orchestra. During undergraduate studies at Arizona State University’s Herberger College of Fine Arts he was named “Outstanding Graduate” and received numerous other distinctions.

Brett Mitchell, Houston Symphony
Brett Mitchell has been Assistant Conductor of the Orchestre National de France since February 2006, and served as Director of Orchestras at Northern Illinois University from 2005 to 2007. Prior to these appointments, he served as Associate Conductor of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and held music directorships of numerous collegiate, community, and youth orchestras in Austin, Texas and his native Seattle. Mitchell received his master’s and doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting from The University of Texas at Austin and his Bachelor of Music in Composition from Western Washington University. He has studied with Kurt Masur, Leonard Slatkin, Gerard Schwarz, Gunther Schuller, Marin Alsop, and Jorma Panula. Mitchell was invited to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in 2005 as part of the National Conducting Institute, and traveled to New York in 2006 at the invitation of Maestro Masur, conducting Mozart’s 40th Symphony on the 250th anniversary of his birth. In 2006, Mitchell was the youngest semifinalist in the Third International Conductors’ Competition Sir Georg Solti, and was a finalist for the Conductors Guild’s 2007 Thelma A. Robinson Award. He has been invited by Masur to cover his 80th-birthday concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the BBC Proms in July 2007, and will join the ONF on tour that same month. Mitchell has recently conducted the Frankfurt Radio, Houston, and Memphis symphonies, and will appear with members of the Dallas Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project at the Skaneateles Festival in upstate New York in August 2007.

Tito Muñoz, The Cleveland Orchestra
Twenty-three-year-old conductor Tito Muñoz is currently Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, appointed in May 2006 by Paavo Järvi. He also serves as Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra and Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. An alumnus of the National Conducting Institute, Muñoz has conducted The Cleveland Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and recently made his critically acclaimed subscription debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. During the summers of 2004 through 2006, Muñoz was a student at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival, where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin and won the 2005 Robert J. Harth Conductor Prize and 2006 Aspen Conducting Prize. He will return to Aspen this summer as assistant conductor of the festival. A native of New York City, Muñoz began his musical training on the violin at age 13 in the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program. He studied violin and composition at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division, where he was awarded the Richard Kimball Composition Award. He attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts and was a member of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York and the New York Youth Symphony. He continued his training at the Aaron Copland School of Music, Queens College (CUNY), as a violin student of Daniel Phillips.

Ward Stare, Los Angeles Philharmonic
At the invitation of Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, the young American conductor Ward Stare will become the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s American Symphony Orchestra League Conducting Fellow, starting in the fall of the 2007-08 season. Stare was trained as a trombonist at the Juilliard School and, at the age of 18, was appointed principal trombone of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. He has performed as an orchestral musician with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, among others. As a soloist, he has concertized in the U.S. and Europe. Stare studied conducting with David Zinman, Janos Furst, and Jorma Panula, and worked with Michel Merlet on composition and musical analysis. He made his conducting debut in 2004 at the age of 22 leading the Concertante di Chicago ensemble. Recently, he was guest conductor of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra as part of their 2007 North American Tour. Stare is the 2006 recipient of the Robert J. Harth Conductor Prize at the Aspen Music Festival. In August 2007, he will make his debut with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Music Center. Other upcoming engagements include concerts in Russia with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, and concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on both the Toyota Symphonies for Youth and the Neighborhood Concert series.

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