Brett Mitchell, American Conducting Fellow
Brett Mitchell was appointed to the position of American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony in September 2007. In that role, he leads the orchestra in several dozen classical, education, family, special, run-out and gala concerts each season in Jones Hall and throughout the greater Houston area. He will make his subscription debut with the orchestra during the 2008-09 season, sharing a program with music director Hans Graf. Mitchell has also been assistant conductor of the Orchestre National de France since February 2006, conducting the orchestra and assisting Kurt Masur at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and on tour. Additionally, he led the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall during rehearsals for Masur’s 80th-birthday concert at the BBC Proms in July 2007.
From 2002 to 2006, Mitchell was associate conductor of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, where his responsibilities included leading subscription programs, many world and U.S. premieres, numerous multi-media productions and several recording projects. Mitchell was also director of orchestras and music director of the opera program at Northern Illinois University from 2005 to 2007, during which time he led his first two opera productions: Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Mark Adamo’s Little Women. He has also held music directorships of the University of Texas University Orchestra and several youth and community orchestras, and has served as cover conductor of the Austin Symphony.
During the 2006-07 season, Mitchell conducted the Frankfurt Radio and Memphis symphonies, as well as members of the Dallas Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic and Boston Modern Orchestra Project at New York’s Skaneateles Festival. He made his European debut in 2004 in a series of three concerts with the Brasov Philharmonic Orchestra in Romania, and made his Latin American debut in 2005 with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM in Mexico City.
In early 2008, Mitchell was one of two young conductors chosen by Kurt Masur to receive the inaugural American Friends of the Mendelssohn Foundation Scholarship, entailing intensive, one-on-one study with Masur, and assisting him with concerts in Vienna, Berlin, Weimar, Leipzig and with the New York Philharmonic. He was also invited to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra and study with Leonard Slatkin in May 2005 as part of the National Conducting Institute, and was invited by Slatkin to work with the NSO again in 2006.
Born in Seattle in 1979, Mitchell received his master’s and doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting from The University of Texas at Austin and his Bachelor of Music in Composition from Western Washington University. He has additionally studied with David Robertson, Gerard Schwarz, Gunther Schuller, Marin Alsop, Jorma Panula and Larry Rachleff. Mitchell was the youngest of ten semifinalists from a pool of over 500 applicants in the Third International Conductors’ Competition Sir Georg Solti in 2006, and was selected as a finalist for the Conductors Guild’s 2007 Thelma A. Robinson Award.