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CONDUCTOR:
HUW EDWARDS
The Olympia Symphony Orchestra is led by Huw Edwards, music Director and conductor.
Huw Edwards has completed three successful and memorable seasons as Music Director of the Olympia Symphony Orchestra, having been selected after a yearlong audition process during 2002-3. There has been a palpable sense of excitement in Olympia following Huw’s appointment and this past season was a landmark one as all five of the Orchestra’s concerts sold out; Edwards is credited with greatly improving the Orchestra, selecting challenging yet rewarding programs and being very active in the community. Last season included performances of the Saint-Saëns “Organ” Symphony, Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto (with Charlie Albright), the 5th Symphony by Vaughan Williams, and an engaging evening of operatic music.
Mr. Edwards is also the Music Director of the Columbia Symphony in Portland, Oregon—a post he has held since 2000—and has consistently received critical acclaim from audiences, guest soloists and the press for his intense performances and daring programming. Recent highlights have included performances of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, Beethoven’s Eroica, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, as well as world premiere performances of new and commissioned works by several Pacific Northwest composers.
Active as a guest conductor, Mr. Edwards has performed with the Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, worked with the symphony orchestras of Dallas and Memphis, as well as with ensembles in Illinois, New York, Idaho, Vermont, Minnesota, Oregon, Nebraska, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and throughout the United Kingdom. In recent seasons Mr. Edwards has guest conducted the Montana Festival Orchestra, the All-State Orchestras of Texas, Utah, Washington and Nebraska, the Sapporo Philharmonic, Melbourne Youth Orchestra, the YMA Orchestra in Salem, CWU Orchestra in Ellensburg, and has served as cover conductor for the Seattle Symphony. In July 2004 Huw conducted the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra in Madison before 20,000 people at one of their famous “Concerts on the Square” and was invited back this past summer and conducted another successful program. Huw made a notable debut with the Eugene Symphony last November and recently deputized in Eugene, at very short notice, in a difficult program of works by Shostakovich and the American composer, Michael Daugherty. Huw was invited to be the conductor at the inaugural Annas Bay Music Festival this August, where he conducted two 20th-century American operas.
From 2002-2005 Mr. Edwards was Music Director of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras and was a faculty member at the Marrowstone Music Festival from 1998 to 2005. Mr. Edwards moved to Seattle after seven memorable seasons (1995-2002) as Music Director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic in Oregon, which included landmark tours to Canada, and to New Zealand and Australia.
Born in Wales, Great Britain, Mr. Edwards holds degrees from the University of Surrey in England and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Mr. Edwards came to the Northwest from Chicago, Illinois, where he was a lecturer at Northwestern University and a Doctoral candidate. Mr. Edwards has been active as a conductor since the age of 17 when he was appointed Music Director of the Maidstone Opera Company in England—a post he held for six years—and came to the United States in 1988 on scholarship to attend SMU in Texas. His principal teachers have been Simon Johnson and Barry Wordsworth (London), Anshel Brusilow and Eduardo Mata (Dallas), and Victor Yampolsky (Chicago). |
