What's cool about this evening:

• Michael Morgan, the acclaimed conductor, Music Director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, and artistic director of Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, California.
• Revueltas. Ibert. Hailstork. Mozart. This night’s eclectic!
• Dimitri Murrath, Chair of String and PIano Chamber, performs.

Program

Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Homenaje a Federico Garcia Lorca 
     I. Baile (Dance)
     II. Duelo (Affliction)
     III. Son

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201
     I. Allegro moderato
     II. Andante
     III. Menuetto
     IV. Allegro con spirito 

Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941)
Two Romances for Viola and Chamber Orchestra
     I. Romance No. 1 - Moderato
     II. Romance No. 2 - Amoroso
Featuring Dimitri Murrath, viola

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) 
Divertissement
     I. Introduction
     II.Cortège
     III. Nocturne
     IV. Waltz
     V. Parade
     VI. Finale

Get to Know Michael Morgan:

Michael Morgan was born in 1957 and raised in Washington, D.C. where he attended public schools. He attended McKinley Tech High School in Washington D.C. and was affiliated with the D.C. Youth Orchestra Program but began conducting at the age of 12. While a student at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music (studying composition) he spent a summer at Tanglewood. There he was a student of Gunther Schuller and Seiji Ozawa and it was at that time that he first worked with Leonard Bernstein. During his final year at Oberlin he was also the Apprentice Conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic under Julius Rudel.

In 1980, he won first prize in the Hans Swarovsky International Conductors Competition in Vienna, Austria and became Assistant Conductor of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin. His operatic debut was in 1982 at the Vienna State Opera in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. In 1986, Sir Georg Solti chose him to become the Assistant Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra a position he held for five years under both Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim. He became music director of the Oakland East Bay Symphony in 1990. Maestro Morgan serves as artistic director of the Oakland Youth Orchestra, and was the music director of the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra (and the Sacramento Opera) from 1999-2015 and artistic director of Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, California for more than 10 seasons.  He teaches the graduate conducting course at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and is Music Director at the Bear Valley Music Festival in California.   In 2002 and 2003 he taught conducting at the Tanglewood Music Center and has led conducting workshops around the country. As Stage Director he has led productions of the Bernstein Mass at the Oakland East Bay Symphony and a modern staging of Mozart’s Don Giovanni at Festival Opera, where he has also staged Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Gounod’s Faust.  As a chamber musician (piano) he has appeared on the Chamber Music Alive series in Sacramento as well as the occasional appearance in the Bay Area. As a guest conductor he has appeared with most of America’s major orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, National Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Alabama Symphony, Houston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Edmonton Symphony and Omaha Symphony. He was Music Advisor to the Peoria during their most recent conductor search. As conductor of opera he has performed with St. Louis Opera Theater, New York City Opera (in New York and on tour), and the Staatsoper in Berlin. Abroad he has conducted orchestras in Europe, South America, the Middle East (Israel and Egypt) and even the Kimbaguiste Symphony Orchestra in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2005, he was honored by the San Francisco Chapter of The Recording Academy with the 2005 Governors Award for Community Service. On the opposite coast, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) chose Morgan as one of its five 2005 Concert Music Award recipients. ASCAP further honored Oakland East Bay Symphony in 2006 with its Award for Adventurous Programming. The San Francisco Foundation honored him with one of its Community Leadership Awards and he received an Honorary Doctorate from Holy Names University in Oakland,CA. In 2014 he gave a TEDx Talk and was featured by Musical America as one of their “Profiles of Courage”.

He has served of the boards of the League of American Orchestras and the International  House at the University of California, Berkeley, and the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. Currently he is on the boards of the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation, the Oaktown Jazz Workshops, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.