Paul Phillips, conductor
Under his leadership, the Brown University Orchestra has become recognized as one of the top university orchestras in the US, winning seven ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming and performing with such illustrious soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Christopher O’Riley, Eugenia Zukerman, Carol Wincenc, Sergiu Luca and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. In 2006-07, Phillips led the Brown Orchestra on a New Year’s concert tour of China, performing in Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Suzhou, Changzhou and Ningbo; they have also performed in New York at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall as well as in Boston, Cambridge and Montreal. In 2006, Daniel Barenboim conducted the orchestra during his residency at Brown with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Barry Bostwick, Kate Burton, Oskar Eustis, Bill Harley, Senator Lincoln Chafee and Brown University President Ruth Simmons are among those who have narrated works with Phillips and the Brown Orchestra.
photo credit: Angela Brimsberry 2009
Paul Phillips has conducted over 60 orchestras, opera and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Boston Academy of Music (now called Opera Boston), Opera Providence, Festival Ballet Providence, Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with which he recorded two compact discs. Recent guest conducting engagements include Madama Butterfly with Commonwealth Opera, Don Giovanni with Brown Summer Opera, a performance in Portugal with the Braga Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, and concerts with the Massachusetts and Vermont All-State Orchestras. In June 2010, he recorded a new Naxos CD of music by William Perry with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, and on 19 and 20 November 2010, he conducted the first staged production of Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare ballet Mr W.S. These performances were played by the Orchestra of the Conservatoire du Rayonnement Régional d’Angers and danced by the Compagnie Marie-Laure Agrapart from Paris at Théâtre Chanzy in Angers, France.
As Music Director and Conductor since 1994, Paul Phillips has led the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus to new artistic heights, securing its position as one of the preeminent musical organizations in western Massachusetts. He has spearheaded collaborative projects with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Hampshire Choral Society, Old Deerfield Productions, Amherst Ballet, glass artist Josh Simpson, and other artists and arts organizations throughout the region, and led the PVS in memorable performances of Beethoven’s Ninth, Mahler’s Second and Fifth Symphonies, the Verdi Requiem, The Rite of Spring, The Planets, Carmina Burana and Ellis Island: The Dream of America. Under his leadership, the PVS has won an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, been profiled twice in Symphony Magazine, and released the recording Living with the Classics, a CD box set produced by Arizona University Recordings. In April 2010, the PVS was the host orchestra for EarShot, the National Orchestral Composition Discovery Network, and, in October 2010, will represent the commonwealth of Massachusetts in the Ford Made in America project when it performs Chasing Light… by Joseph Schwantner.
Guest Conducting
On tour in China, December 2006
Conducting the Brahms Violin Concerto with Erin Keefe and the Pioneer Valley Symphony
Academy of Music • Northampton, MA • 9 September 2008
Performing Symphony No. 5 by Sergei Prokofiev
Sayles Hall • Brown University • 18 October 2009
