The Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra & Chorus Artistic Staff

Paul Phillips | Jonathan Harvey | Jonathan Brennand

PAUL PHILLIPS
Music Director and Conductor

Paul Phillips is an award-winning conductor, composer, and author whose talents encompass a wide range of musical activities. Acclaimed as a conductor “who was born to stand on a podium,” his honors include 1st Prize in the NOS International Conductors Course in Holland, 1st Prize in the Wiener Meisterkurse Conductors Course in Vienna, and nine ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. He has conducted over 60 orchestras, opera and ballet companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Boston Academy of Music, Festival Ballet Providence, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with which he recorded two compact discs on the ITM label. In June 2010 he recorded a CD of the music of William Perry with the RTE National Symphony of Ireland for Naxos. During the 2010-11 season he will conduct the stage premiere of Anthony Burgess’s Shakespeare ballet Mr W.S. in France and lead a series of performances with Opera Providence including a new production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte.

As Music Director since 1994, Phillips has led the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus to new artistic heights, securing its position as one of the preeminent musical organizations in western Massachusetts. He has spearheaded collaborative projects with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Hampshire Choral Society, Old Deerfield Productions, Amherst Ballet, glass artist Josh Simpson, and other artists and arts organizations throughout the region, and led the PVS in memorable performances of Beethoven’s Ninth, Mahler’s Second and Fifth Symphonies, the Verdi Requiem, The Rite of Spring, The Planets, Carmina Burana and Ellis Island: The Dream of America. Under his leadership, the PVS has won an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, been profiled twice in Symphony Magazine, been recorded on the Living with the Classics CD box set produced by Arizona University Recordings, participated in the Earshot Project of readings of new orchestral works in cooperation with the American Composers Orchestra, and been selected to represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the national Ford Made in America Project.

In his position as Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Brown University, he has led Brown University Orchestra in performances with such illustrious soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Christopher O’Riley and the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Phillips and the Brown Orchestra have performed in New York at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall as well as in Boston, Cambridge, Montreal, Shanghai and Beijing. In 2009, the Brown University Orchestra won its seventh ASCAP Award under his leadership.  

With a conducting repertoire of over 900 works, Phillips has conducted much of the standard repertoire, including opera and musical theatre ranging from Don Giovanni to Sweeney Todd. He enjoys jazz and has led concerts featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, Tony Bennett and other popular artists. A strong believer in the importance of music in the lives of young people, he has worked extensively with student musicians and audiences as Youth Concert Conductor of the Maryland Symphony for fourteen years and as conductor of numerous youth and All-State orchestras. In collaboration with Bill Harley, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, he has composed and arranged pieces for youth concerts that are performed by orchestras throughout the country.  

After attending the Eastman School of Music as a composition-piano double major, Phillips graduated cum laude in music from Columbia University, later earning graduate degrees in composition and conducting from Columbia and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, respectively. He pursued additional studies at the Salzburg “Mozarteum”, Académie internationale d'été in Nice, Eastman, Music Academy of the West, Aspen and Tanglewood. His conducting teachers include Kurt Masur, Gunther Schuller and Leonard Bernstein. After beginning his career at the Frankfurt Opera and Stadttheater Lüneburg in Germany, he was selected for the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program and subsequently returned to the US, assuming conducting posts in Greensboro and Savannah before arriving at Brown University in 1989.  

Apart from conducting, Phillips is also an accomplished composer, pianist and author. His music has been performed internationally and received many prizes, including awards from the New England String Ensemble, American Music Center and ASCAP. Recent works include War Music and War Music Suite (premiered in 2009 by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra); A/B (2007), a composition for actor and chamber ensemble premiered at the 2007 FirstWorksProv Festival; and Battle-Pieces, a song cycle on poems by Herman Melville. As a pianist, he has performed at the Mohawk Trail Concerts, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Carnegie Recital Hall and Lincoln Center, and recorded for film and television. Currently Phillips serves on the Nominating Committee of the Conductors Guild and on the Board of the Directors of the American Music Center.

Considered the leading authority on the music of composer-novelist Anthony Burgess, Phillips is a featured commentator in the BBC television documentary The Burgess Variations. His writings have been published in numerous journals and books, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Music Analysis, Symphony Magazine, The Journal of Music, and three volumes of collected essays on Burgess. His book A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess is scheduled to be published in 2010 by Manchester University Press.

JONATHAN HARVEY
Chorus Director

Jonathan Harvey is a conductor, vocalist, and educator based in the Pioneer Valley. He currently works as a Lecturer in the Music Department at Elms College, where he conducts the Vocal Arts Ensemble. Harvey is the Music Director of the South Hadley Chorale and the Wilbraham Choral Society Mixed Chorus. He is also Director of Music at Florence Congregational Church, and maintains a studio of voice students at Longmeadow High School. In addition, he serves as an assistant conductor with several area ensembles, including the Children’s Chorus of Springfield. 

Harvey has worked as the Assistant Conductor of the Hampshire Choral Society, and has worked with the Five College Collegium and the Northfield Mount Hermon School Concert Choir.  He has been published in the Choral Journal, and is a member of the American Choral Directors Association.

As an M.M. student in Choral Conducting and Musicology at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Harvey led the Indiana University Symphonic Choir, as well as holding the position of Music Director at Roberts Park United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, IN. At the Jacobs School, he was a recipient of the Dean's Scholarship, and was a member of the premiere chamber vocal ensemble at the School, the University Singers, working under conductors such as Dale Warland and Jorg Ritter. His primary teachers at the Jacobs School were William Jon Gray and Carmen Tellez.

Harvey earned his B.A. in Music and Philosophy from Earlham College, where he was student conductor of both the Concert Choir and the Orchestra, as well as forming a new ensemble, the Earlham College Chamber Choir. His primary teachers at Earlham were Daniel Graves and Forrest Tobey.

JONATHAN BRENNAND
Assistant Conductor

Jonathan Brennand joins PVSO for his first season as Assistant Conductor. Born and raised in Middlesex, England, where he began his musical career as a boy in the St. Martin's Boy Choir. Trained as a singer and violinist, he currently lives and works in the Pioneer Valley.

For the past seven years, he has been a member of the College Light Opera Company on Cape Cod, a summer training program for aspiring young vocalists, instrumentalists and technicians in their undergraduate and graduate careers. A member of the music faculty, he serves as Music Director and Principal Conductor. In 2010, in cooperation with the Victor Herbert Foundation, he restored the entire score of Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta from the original autographs. He is currently editing a new edition of Herbert's one-act Madeline, an opera that debuted in 1914 with I Pagliacci that has since fallen into obscurity.

He holds a double BA in Music and European History from Drew University, and an MM in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Previous teachers include Dr. Anne Matlack, David Weiller, Lanfranco Marcelletti, Jr., and Dr. Tony Thornton.