About FSO: Elizabeth Schulze
Schulze, who is also music director and conductor of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the principal guest conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, is an advocate of music education and brings a breadth of experience and an obvious passion to the podium of Ardrey Memorial Auditorium.
Schulze has been the associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she has served as the music director and conductor of the Waterloo / Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra in Iowa and assistant conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic, an appointment that was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. For eight years she held the position as music director and conductor of the Kenosha Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin and served as a conducting assistant and cover conductor for the New York Philharmonic.
Schulze has graced the stage in the United States and abroad, conducting orchestras and opera companies. In 1996 she made her European debut, leading the Mainz Chamber Orchestra for the opening concert of the Atlantisches Festival in Kaiserslautern, Germany. She appeared in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Vienna with the National Symphony during its 1997 European tour. She was guest assistant conductor at the Aspen Music Festival, the Paris Opera (Bastille) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She has also appeared with the Monarch Brass Ensemble, the Erie, Pennsylvania, and Hong Kong Philharmonics, and debuted most recently with the Jerusalem, Detroit and San Francisco symphony orchestras.
In her role as an advocate of music education, Schulze has led the American Composer’s Orchestra in educational and family concerts in Carnegie Hall and throughout New York City. She was an artist-in-residence at Northwestern University and has guest conducted the orchestras of The University of Maryland, the Manhattan School of Music and Catholic University of America.
She has also conducted at the NSO / Kennedy Center National Trustees Summer Music Institute for nine years and joined her mentor Leonard Slatkin seven years ago teaching at the NSO’s National Conducting Institute.
She received the first Aspen Music School Conducting Award in 1991. An honors graduate of Interlachen Arts Academy and Bryn Mawr College, she earned an A.B. cum laude in philosophy and holds graduate degrees in orchestral and choral conducting from SUNY at Stony Brook. The first doctoral fellow in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University, she was a conducting fellow at L’École d’Arts Americaines in France. At Aspen, she worked with Murry Sidlin, Lawrence Foster and Sergiu Commissiona. As a Tanglewood fellow, she worked with Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier and Leonard Bernstein.
