Niagara Symphony Orchestra - Music Director Candidates

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Music Director Candidates

In his position as the associate conductor for the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Bradley Thachuk is responsible for conducting subscription concerts, Pops concerts, all education and outreach concerts, and the Fort Wayne Ballet, in addition to being music director for the Fort Wayne Youth Symphony. He previously held the position of interim music director for the Prince George Symphony Orchestra in Canada. Thachuk served as conducting assistant for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras in 2000–01 and has a continued association with these orchestras as a part-time cover conductor.

Diane Wittry

A native of California, DIANE WITTRY, is respected as an innovative conductor who maintains a dual career as an esteemed music director and acclaimed guest conductor throughout the world. During the past few seasons, Diane Wittry has conducted concerts in Japan, Russia, Slovakia, New York, Washington D.C, New Jersey, and California, as well as her regularly scheduled concerts with the orchestras in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

John Morris Russell

Maestro John Morris Russell has consistently won international praise for his extraordinary musicmaking and visionary leadership. Since his appointment as Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in 2001, Mr. Russell has ushered in a new era of unprecedented artistic growth for the WSO and has invigorated the musical life of the Windsor-Essex region. A two-time recipient of Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts, as well as the Ontario Arts Council’s Vida Peene Award for Artistic Excellence, Maestro Russell and the WSO have also won coveted nominations for both the Gemini Awards (2004) and Juno Awards (2008). Now in his eighth season, Mr. Russell conducts 16 weeks with the WSO including Masterworks and Pops subscription programmes, concerts on the new Intimate Classics series, and the prestigious Windsor Canadian Music Festival.

Timothy Hankewich

The 2008-2009 season marks Timothy Hankewich's third year as the Music Director of the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra. Hankewich, who is popular with audiences and critics alike, has earned an outstanding reputation as a maestro whose classical artistry is as inspiring as his personality is engaging. While conducting Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 in D minor at a Cedar Rapids Symphony concert in January 2006, the Cedar Rapids Gazette applauded him for "directing without a musical score and displaying a command of the selection and the orchestra." In 2002, The Kansas City Star named his performance of Strauss' Four Last Songs one of "15 Great Moments in Classical Music and Dance in 2002." The previous season, following Hankewich's last-minute appearance on the podium for a challenging program of Takemitsu, Adams, Scriabin, and Debussy, critic Paul Horsley described Hankewich as a "commanding figure onstage, with a mellifluously physical conducting style that must be impossible for a player not to respond to. There is an easygoing fluidity to his phrasing, rubato and tempos and the orchestra seems especially animated."

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