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DAVID RUDGE
Music Director and Conductor
David Rudge, Music Director of the Erehwon Ensemble, has conducted orchestras on five continents to critical acclaim. While Director of Orchestras and Opera at the State University of New York at Fredonia he led the significant expansion of those programs over his 25 years. As Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Guatemala he was credited with the dramatic rebirth of that orchestra. Described as “dynamic” and “electric,” Guatemala’s Prensa Libre wrote, “it has been many years since we have heard a symphony orchestra play with such inspiration.”
As the first Music Director of the Rock Hill Symphony Orchestra, Rudge performed to full houses and led the organization through exponential growth. He founded the Eastminster Chamber Orchestra and was Assistant Conductor of the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the Columbia Lyric Opera and Ballet, and the South Carolina Philharmonic. While with those ensembles, he was noted for his “Bernstein-like intensity” The State, Columbia, SC. He was chosen several times to prepare the Beethoven Chamber Orchestra for the International Workshop for Conductors in ZlÌn, Czech Republic. He has guest conducted the West Bohemian Symphony Orchestra in Mariánské Lázne, CR, and, as a two-time winner of the International Opera Conductors’ Competition, he was invited to conduct a complete production at the Silesian State Opera in the Czech Republic, and to lead the Vratza Philharmonic in Bulgaria. In 2012 he won the American Prize for Conducting and in 2020 the production of Massenet’s Cendrillon he conducted won first place in the National Opera Association Competition.
As an Artistic Ambassador for the State Department, he spent two months in Damascus, Syria conducting the National Symphony and Chamber Orchestra. He has conducted the Opera and Orchestra at the Rome Festival, Italy, and has guest conducted such ensembles as the Dialecto Urbano Chorus, Caracas, Venezuela, the Giurgiu Philharmonic (Romania), the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Western New York Chamber Orchestra, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia. Rudge has worked with some of today’s finest soloists, including Jeremy Denk, David Kim, Larry Combs, Carol Wincenc, Jeffrey Khaner, Gail Williams, Elizabeth Hainen, Jean-Luc Ponty, Charles Castleman, Mark O’Connor, Zuill Bailey, and Yo-Yo Ma. Dr. Rudge was awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to conduct in the Midde East. As a Senior Fellow, he spent many months in Egypt conducting the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra, the Cairo Opera Orchestra, Opera Chorus, and teaching at the National Conservatoire of Music. He recently returned to conduct the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, where the press called him “a proper maestro. . . grandly expressive.”
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Rudge, whose wide repertoire includes over 25 operas, has studied conducting at the Dartington School, England, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Pierre Monteux School, the Aspen Music School, the National Conservatory of Romania, and the Conductors Institute with Donald Portnoy and Harold Farberman. He also worked with such notables as Charles Bruck, Max Rudolf, Gunther Schuller, and Maurice Abravanel. He has played as both a violinist and violist with a number of orchestras and chamber ensembles both in the US and abroad. He has also pursued baroque performance practice, as both a violinist and conductor, with the directors and members of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra.
Rudge has given numerous classes in conducting and violin internationally and has been coach and guest conductor of the Boston, Columbia, Houston, and Costa Rican youth symphonies, as well as many student honor-orchestras, such as the New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois All-State Orchestras. He was a faculty member at the Conductor’s Institute at Bard, and at the National ASTA Conference. He is the Director of the Musicianship Program for Music for People and for many years taught Free-Improvisation at SUNY Fredonia, where he also founded the Improv. Collective, a unique performing group dedicated to free improvisation for self-expression. More about his interest and work with free improvisation can be seen at www.nowrongnotes.com
