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Conductor Christopher Wilkins is Music Director of the Orlando Philharmonic and the Akron Symphony. In both cities he has favored programming that emphasizes quality music making, community participation, and partnerships with other artists and organizations. Projects have included concert operas, staged plays, concert musicals, newly commissioned multi-media works, historically oriented performances, and children's programs of all kinds.
As a guest conductor, Mr. Wilkins has appeared with many of the leading orchestras of the United States, including those of Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. He also appears frequently overseas, with concerts in recent seasons in Latin America, New Zealand, and Spain.
He served as Music Director of the San Antonio Symphony and the Colorado Springs Symphony, and is currently Artistic Advisor to the Opera Theatre of the Rockies. While in San Antonio, he and the orchestra received six programming awards from ASCAP, including the first-ever Morton Gould Award for creative programming. He was also resident conductor of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, helping in the formation of that orchestra in its inaugural season, and subsequently leading it on tours throughout the Americas in the summers of 2002 and 2003.
Mr. Wilkins was winner of the Seaver/NEA Award in 1992. He was associate conductor of the Utah Symphony, assisting his former teacher Joseph Silverstein; assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra under Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi; conducting assistant with the Oregon Symphony under Music Director James DePreist; and a conducting fellow at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood.
Born in Boston, Mr. Wilkins earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1978. As an oboist, he performed with many ensembles in the Boston area, including the Berkshire Music Center Orchestra at Tanglewood, and the Boston Philharmonic under Benjamin Zander. He studied with Otto-Werner Mueller at Yale University, receiving his master of music degree in 1981. Prior to that, he attended the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin as a recipient of the John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship, awarded by the Harvard music department.