Music Director & Orchestra

Elizabeth Schulze, Music Director

With passion, verve, and illuminating musicianship, Elizabeth Schulze has been conducting orchestras and opera companies, advocating for music education, and electrifying audiences in the United States and abroad for more than two and a half decades.

Recipient of the very first Maryland Symphony Orchestra’s Elizabeth Schulze Music Advocacy Award in 2014, and the 2013 Sorel Medallion in Conducting for her adventurous programming, Schulze is in her 16th season as the Music Director and Conductor of the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and her 7th season as the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, she is Principal Guest Conductor of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.

In 1996 she made her European debut, leading the Mainz Chamber Orchestra in the Atlantisches Festival in Kaiserslautern, Germany. She appeared in Paris as the assistant guest conductor for the Paris Opera and has also appeared in London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Vienna with the National Symphony during its 1997 European tour. Her most recent international work includes conducting the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. This fall takes her to Taiwan for appearances with Taipei's Evergreen Symphony Orchestra.

Schulze’s recent guest conducting in the States includes appearances with the New Jersey, Detroit, San Francisco, and Chautauqua symphony orchestras. Her past positions with U.S. orchestras include an appointment as associate conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, music director and conductor of the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony Orchestra, a seven-year position as music director and conductor of the Kenosha Symphony Orchestra, cover conductor and conducting assistant for the New York Philharmonic, and assistant conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic, an appointment sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since the beginning of her career, Schulze has been a spirited advocate for music education. Her far-ranging work includes her ongoing association with the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute (SMI). For 14 years Schulze has conducted, taught and mentored dozens of young musicians in the SMI at the Kennedy Center.  She has also conducted the American Composer’s Orchestra in educational and family concerts in Carnegie Hall and throughout New York City. And for six years, Schulze joined her mentor Leonard Slatkin teaching at the NSO’s National Conducting Institute.

Her music education and mentoring work, spans from elementary to university students. 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 and guest lectured at The Juilliard School.

Schulze’s own education includes training in Europe and in the United States. She graduated cum laude from Bryn Mawr College and as an honors student from Interlochen Arts Academy. She holds graduate degrees in orchestral and choral conducting from SUNY at Stony Brook. She was the first doctoral fellow in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University and was selected as a conducting fellow at L’École d’Arts Americaines in France. In 1991, she was the recipient of the first Aspen Music School Conducting Award. At Aspen, she has worked with Murry Sidlin, Lawrence Foster, and Sergiu Commissiona. As a Tanglewood fellow, she has worked with Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier, and Leonard Bernstein.

Schulze is represented by John Such Artists Management, Ltd.

2016-2017 Orchestra

*on leave

+ guest musician