DIANE WITTRY
Conductor

A native of California, DIANE WITTRY, is respected as an innovative conductor who maintains a dual career as an esteemed music director and acclaimed guest conductor throughout the world. During the past few seasons, Diane Wittry has conducted concerts in Japan, Russia, Slovakia, New York, Washington D.C, New Jersey, and California, as well as her regularly scheduled concerts with the orchestras in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

In the United States, Diane Wittry has led performances by, among others, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Florida Philharmonic Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Little Orchestra Society of New York, and the symphony orchestras of San Diego, Santa Barbara, Stockton, New Jersey, Houston, Wichita, and Wichita Falls; while her international engagements include concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, Russia’s Maikop and Sochi symphony orchestras, Slovakia’s State Orchestra-Kosice, Italy’s Sinfonia Dell’Arte di Firenze and Japan’s Orchestra Osaka Symphoniker.

As the Music Director of both the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, Diane Wittry has helped expand the size of each organization’s concert season, while reaching out to the diverse populations of the communities-at-large. She has been a tireless advocate for the development of extensive educational programs, and she has championed an exciting, innovative programming style for concerts of all types. The Stamford Advocate recently featured Diane Wittry as “a Music Director/Conductor who specializes in finding creative ways to make the music fresh, accessible, and exciting.”

Prior to this, Diane Wittry served as the Music Director of The Symphony of Southeast Texas. Her work in Beaumont, Texas garnered national attention for the exceptional artistic and organizational growth that occurred under her leadership. She has also conducted at the music festivals of Ojai and Penn’s Woods.

Diane Wittry began her conducting studies with Daniel Lewis at the University of Southern California, from which she graduated with honors. While still a student, she was the recipient of a conducting fellowship from the Aspen Music Festival. Her other teachers and mentors include Michael Tilson Thomas, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Gustav Meier and Jorge Mester; most recently, she worked with the renowned Russian conductor Leonid Korchmar of the Kirov Opera, and Jorma Panula from Finland.

Over the years, Diane Wittry has received many honors and awards, including the American Symphony Orchestra League’s 1996 Helen M. Thompson Award for outstanding artistic leadership of a regional orchestra. She has been the subject of profiles in The New York Times (September, 2002) and Newsweek (September, 1994). In 2000, Ms. Wittry received the “Women of Excellence” Award in Beaumont, Texas; and in 1999 and 2000, the “Arts Ovation Award” and the “Woman of Distinction Award” from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Most recently, she became only the third American to be named – in recognition of her leadership in the arts and humanities – the recipient of the prestigious Fiorino Doro Award from the city of Vinci, Italy.

This past year, Diane Wittry was appointed by the League of American Orchestras as the “national mentor” for regional music directors in their first or second year; and in the summers she serves as a faculty member of the South Carolina Conductor’s Institute. Her new book Beyond the Baton, about artistic leadership for young conductors and music directors (Oxford University Press, 2007), is now the focus of a yearly National Conducting Workshop which helps emerging conductors put to practical use the elements in the book.