Michael Morgan (conductor)

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Michael Morgan (born September, 1957 in Washington, D.C.) is an American conductor for Oakland East Bay Symphony, since 1990, and music director for the Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra.

[edit] Biography

Michael Morgan born and raised in Washington, D.C, where he attended public schools and began conducting at the age of 12. While a student at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, he spent a summer at the Oberlin College Conservatory 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.

In 1980, he won first prize in the Hans Swarovsky International Conductors Competition in Vienna, Austria and became Assistant Conductor of the Saint 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. In addition to his duties with Oakland East Bay Symphony, Maestro Morgan serves as Artistic Director of Oakland Youth Orchestra, Music Director of Sacramento Philharmonic Orchestra, Artistic Director of Festival Opera in Walnut Creek, California, and teaches the graduate conducting course at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 2002 and 2003 he taught conducting at the Tanglewood Music Center and has led conducting workshops around the country. This season he teaches a conducting workshop in Winnipeg, Canada and returns to South America as a guest conductor. 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. 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 as well as the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, St. Louis Opera Theater, the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, and Washington National Opera.

In 2005, he received two national awards by major music associations. 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.^[1] ASCAP further honored Oakland East Bay Symphony in 2006 with its Award for Adventurous Programming. Last year the San Francisco Foundation honored him with one of its Community Leadership Awards and he received an Honorary Doctorate from Holy Names University.

He makes many appearances in the nation's schools each year, particularly in the East Bay, and is highly regarded as a champion of arts education and minority access to the arts. He serves on the Board of the American Symphony Orchestra League as well as the International House at the University of California at Berkeley.