Bio
MURRY SIDLIN, conductor
Murry Sidlin is in his tenth year as Director (Dean) of the School of Music at The Catholic University of American in Washington, D.C. The summer of 2011 marked Mr. Sidlin’s 34th year of service at the Aspen Music Festival, where he is resident artist/teacher and associate director of conducting. He and Aspen Music Festival former music director David Zinman spent five summers developing and leading Aspen’s American Academy of conducting, a new school within the Aspen Festival for which they serve as the two resident teachers. Mr. Sidlin marked his twelfth and final season as Artistic Director of the Cascade Festival of Music in Bend, Oregon, in 2007.
Mr. Sidlin has held a number of distinguished music directorships and appears as guest conductor around the world, including recent appearances with the St. Louis Symphony and the major orchestras of San Francisco, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Jerusalem, Madrid, I Solisti Veneti, Quebec, Honolulu, Seattle, Monte Carlo, Vancouver, C.D., Victoria B.C., Colorado and Utah, in addition to the Boston Pops, the San Antonio Symphony and Opera, the Houston Symphony and the Lindberg Orchestra of Holland. During the summer of 2000, Mr. Sidlin received rave reviews when he conducted the first performance in Eastern Europe of Bernstein’s Mass at the famed Eastern European festival at Vilnius in Lithuania. He returned to the festival in the summer of 2003. Future and recent past-engagements include returns to Maastricht, Holland as well as the San Diego Symphony, where he conducts their “Light Bulb” series.
He will make his seventeenth appearance as conductor of the annual New Year’s Eve at the Kennedy Center in 2011. He became the first conductor to raise his baton in the refurbished Kennedy Opera House on November 19, 2003 when he conducted excerpts from Leonard Bernstein’s Mass featuring the Catholic University of America’s Symphony Orchestra and Choral Ensembles.
A series of chamber opera collaborations with American director Arvin Brown at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, also featured major revivals of Britten’s Albert Herring and Marc Büzstein’s Regina. Mr. Sidlin conducted the staged American premiere of the 1926 masterpiece King Roger by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski, and collaborated with photo-choreographer James Westwater for a celebrated eight year national concert tour featuring the music of Aaron Copland, sponsored by Chevron Corporation.
Appointed by Presidents Ford and Carter to serve on the Presidential Scholars Commission, Mr. Sidlin was the host and conductor for the PBS children’s series Music Is! and is now host of Fanfare!, a national award-winning cable television show produced in the Portland market by Multnomah Community Television which introduces Oregon Symphony guest artists to a regional audience. In 1997 the National Association of Independent Schools of Music named Mr. Sidlin Educator of the Year. As a practicing professional, conducting teacher and teaching conductor, he is a recognized spokesperson on “demystifying” the symphony orchestra and has been featured on NBC’s The Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’s Sunday Morning. Mr. Sidlin completed his 8th and final season as resident conductor of the Oregon Symphony at the close of the 2001-2002 season. During his tenure he founded and directed the Oregon Symphony Conducting Apprenticeship Program at Pacific University holding the James DePriest Chair in Music. For eight years he conducted the Classical Hits series at the San Diego Symphony and served for several seasons as principal conductor of San Diego’s summer season.
In 1997 Mr. Sidlin arranged and conducted the premiere of a suite from Aaron Copland’s opera The Tender Land for chamber ensemble, designed as a companion work to Copland’s original chamber version of “Appalachian Spring.” Mr. Sidlin has recorded three compact discs on KOCH International featuring Third Angle New Music Ensemble: the first containing both works (1998) and the second containing Mr. Sidlin’s own chamber arrangement of the complete opera “The Tender Land,” also featuring Third Angle (1999).
The latter recording launched the national year-long celebration of Copland’s 100th birthday and was selected by Israel National Radio for broadcast on November 14, 2000, Copland’s 100th birthday. Mr. Sidlin also marked the birthday in Portland with a 10-day Copland Festival, including classical subscription and chamber concerts with the Oregon Symphony, illuminating Copland’s life and work. Mr. Sidlin’s third recording on the Koch label and Third Angle features Piazzolla’s Maria of Buenos Aires and he has also conducted the work in Victoria, San Diego and Aspen.
Mr. Sidlin was also the artistic director of “Nerve Endings” with the Oregon Symphony, a series featuring innovative concerts designed to attract new audiences and expand the traditional role of the symphony orchestra. Each program was written, conducted and designed by Mr. Sidlin and launched via the Knight Foundation of Miami’s “Magic of Music” initiative. “Nerve Endings” attracted hundreds of new subscribers each season. These programs are now titled “Illuminations.” In spring of 2002, he presented Defiant Requiem, a concert/drama that illuminates how and why the Verdi Requiem was presented 16 times by the prisoners of the Terezin Concentration Camp 1943-44. On August 27, 2003, Oregon Public Television’s production of this concert was broadcast on the national PBS network over 220 stations and in the spring of 2006, he led this moving program in Terezin. He has also led this program in Buffalo, Budapest, Washington, DC, Houston and Tulsa and next season he will bring it to Atlanta and the Berkshire Choral Festival.
Mr. Sidlin began his career as assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony under Sergiu Comissiona and was appointed by Antal Dorati as resident conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra for four seasons. He served as Music Director of the New Haven Symphony for 12 seasons, and for eight of those seasons was also Music Director of the Long Beach Symphony in California. He has also served as music director of the Tulsa Philharmonic, the Connecticut Ballet, and was principal guest conductor of the Gavleborg Orkester of Sweden. He has studied with legendary pedagogues Leon Barzin and Sergiu Celibidache.
October 2011
Biography
KMI
