Brett Mitchell– Assistant Conductor/American Conducting Fellow

Brett Mitchell was appointed to the position of Assistant Conductor/American Conducting Fellow of the Houston Symphony in September 2007. Since that time, he has led the orchestra in over fifty performances on all subscription series in Jones Hall and throughout the greater Houston area. His performances with the orchestra have been broadcast nationwide on both SymphonyCast and Performance Today. He recently stepped in on short notice for an ailing Thomas Dausgaard, leading a subscription performance of John Adams’s Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz and Brahms’s First Symphony. From 2006 to 2009, Mr. Mitchell was also Assistant Conductor of the Orchestre National de France, where his responsibilities included conducting the orchestra and assisting Music Director Kurt Masur and such guest conductors as Seiji Ozawa at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and on tour.

In recent seasons, Mr. Mitchell has led the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall; the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter; the Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Oregon, National, Memphis, and Frankfurt Radio symphonies; the Northwest Mahler Festival Orchestra; and SOLI and Musiqa, the primary new music ensembles of San Antonio and Houston, respectively. He also served as Kurt Masur’s musical assistant at the New York Philharmonic during the 2007-08 season, as apprentice conductor to Lorin Maazel at the inaugural Castleton Festival in July 2009, and as cover conductor for The Cleveland Orchestra in August 2009. He made his European debut in 2004 with Romania’s Brasov Philharmonic (to which he returned in 2009) and his Latin American debut in 2005 with the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM in Mexico City. Upcoming engagements include music director finalist concerts with the Peoria and Saginaw Bay symphony orchestras, a family concert with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, a return engagement with Musiqa, and a production with the Moores Opera Center in Houston.

From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Mitchell was Associate Conductor of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, where he led many subscription programs, six world premieres, and several recording projects. Mr. 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: 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 for the Austin Symphony.

In 2008, Mr. Mitchell was chosen by Kurt Masur to receive the inaugural Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Scholarship, entailing intensive, one-on-one study with Masur, and assisting him with concerts in Europe and America. He was invited to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra and to study with Leonard Slatkin as part of the 2005 National Conducting Institute, and was invited by Maestro Slatkin to work with the NSO again in 2006. In June 2009, Mr. Mitchell conducted the Baltimore Symphony in a master class with Marin Alsop.

A native of Seattle, Mr. 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 also studied with Lorin Maazel, David Robertson, Gerard Schwarz, Jorma Panula, and Larry Rachleff.