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Barbara Schubert
Music
Director
Named by the Illinois Council of Orchestras as 2003 Conductor of the Year, Barbara Schubert was cited for her "consistently high artistic standards, her energetic podium style, and her innovative programming." Music Director and Conductor of the DuPage Symphony Orchestra since the autumn of 1986, Maestra Schubert also serves as Music Director and Conductor of the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Fine Arts Symphony in Park Ridge. In addition, she is the Director of Performing Programs at the University of Chicago.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Ms. Schubert began her conducting career while a student of music and mathematics at Smith College. She did her graduate work in Music History and Theory at the University of Chicago, and studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller, Thomas Briccetti, Charles Bruch, and Iva Dee Hiatt.
As Winner of the 1982 American Conductors Competition, Barbara Schubert served two seasons as Assistant Conductor of the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra. In the summer of 1985, she was selected for the Tanglewood Seminar for Conductors, where she studied with Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, and Gustav Meier. She has appeared as a guest conductor with numerous professional ensembles in the Chicago area, including the Grant Park Symphony, the Contemporary Chamber Players, the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Oak Park Symphony, the Chicago Camerata, and Light Opera Works.
Recent guest conducting engagements include the Birmingham Opera Theater (AL), the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra (AK), the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra (CA),the Fargo-Moorehead Symphony (ND), the Fox Valley Symphony (WI and IL), the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic (CA), the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra (IN), and the Northwest Indiana Symphony. She is also a frequent guest conductor for district and all-state festival orchestras around the country.
Known throughout the Chicago area as an orchestra builder, maestra Schubert has dramatically increased the quality and the scope of the symphony orchestras she directs. A champion of new music, Ms. Schubert has conducted a large number of world premieres with both amateur and professional ensembles. One of the most notable was of Hector Berlioz' rarely performed dramatic symphony "Romeo et Juliette" with the University of Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Choruses at the end of May 2003.
In May 2004, Barbara Schubert led the DuPage Symphony Orchestra and choruses in a performance of Gustav Mahler's monumental Ressurection Symphony at the Edman Chapel on the campus of Wheaton College. This performance was the culmination of the DSO's 50th Anniversary season.
Barbara Schubert recently completed a two-year term as President of the Conductor's Guild, an international service organization of nearly 2,000 members that is dedicated to "encouraging and promoting the highest standards in the art and profession of conducting."
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