Edward Cumming is in his ninth season as Music Director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, hailed for its remarkable artistic growth during his tenure. In September 2010, he became Interim Director of Orchestral Activities at The Hartt School.
Before coming to Hartford, Cumming was Resident Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he stepped in for an ailing Mariss Jansons to conduct a program including Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder and Debussy’s Jeux, of which the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote, “some conductors could not do as well even with months to prepare.” During his time in Pittsburgh, he was Music Director of the nationally-acclaimed Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra, which was one of five orchestras invited to the biennial National Youth Orchestra Festival in 1998 and 2002.
World premieres in Hartford include Valerie Coleman’s The Painted Lady, Richard Cumming’s Aspects of Hippolytus, Michael Gatonska’s Wandering the Moon Nursery, Stephen Michael Gryc’s Passagi, and in May 2010, a new orchestration by Mr. Cumming of Charles Ives’s Violin Sonatas, Sonata Set for violin and orchestra. In 2003 and 2006, the League of American Orchestras awarded Mr. Cumming and the Hartford Symphony the ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.
As Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra from 1989 to 1993, Cumming conducted a recording of the “Star Spangled Banner” with Whitney Houston and the Florida Orchestra for Super Bowl XXV. After filling in as guest conductor in 1996, he was appointed Artistic Director of the Flagstaff Festival of the Arts the following summer.
In Europe, Mr. Cumming has led La Orquesta Ciudad de Granada (Spain), the South Bohemian State Orchestra in the Czech Republic, the BBC Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and most recently, the Sinfonica di Roma. In the United States, he has conducted the Philharmonic orchestras of Los Angeles, Rochester and Buffalo, as well the San Diego, Oregon, San Antonio, Santa Barbara and Detroit symphony orchestras. In Asia, he has conducted the Singapore Symphony, and most recently made his Israeli debut with the Be’er Sheva Sinfonietta. In June 2010, he made his South American debut with the Filarmónica de Bogotá, conducting Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande on short notice.
Mr. Cumming studied with Otto-Werner Mueller at Yale University, where he received a Doctorate in Music in 1992. As an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, he was awarded the prestigious Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement in the Arts. In May 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Trinity College.
Bio courtsey of: EdwardCumming.com
