Name: University Orchestra – Mélisse Brunet, guest conductor
Start: 2024-10-30T20:00:00
Location: Musical Arts Center

Mélisse Brunet

Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

American conductor Mélisse Brunet, a native of Paris, France, is quickly gaining attention on both sides of that Atlantic as a “skilled and polished conductor with panache” (ClevelandClassical.com). She is music director of the Lexington Philharmonic (the first woman to hold the position) and of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic. Brunet is one of the five conductors featured in Maggie Contreras’s Tribeca Audience Award-winning documentary Maestra. Last season, she conducted the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Symphony, West Virginia Symphony, Orchestre National Avignon Provence (France), and University of Illinois orchestra, while promoting Maestra in various festivals. A dynamic advocate of contemporary music, Brunet has collaborated with such composers as Shawn Okpebholo, Mary D. Watkins, T. J. Cole, Steven Stucky, Michael Daugherty, Shulamit Ran, James Barry, Loren Loiacono, and Jennifer Higdon, among others. As an opera and music-theater conductor, Brunet has conducted Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti, Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, and Verdi’s La Traviata. As a pops conductor, Brunet has programmed concerts for holiday pops, Independence Day, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and other thematic concerts, performing indoors and out for up to 6,000 people. She also conducted orchestras for live movie projections. A respected educator in both France and the United States, Brunet recently served as the first woman director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Iowa-School of Music, where she conducted symphonic concerts, operas, and musical theater. In addition, she headed the orchestral conducting program at the master’s and doctoral levels, from which her students won major positions. Brunet began her studies on the cello, later learning trumpet, horn, and piano. She holds six diplomas from the Paris Conservatory and a professional studies diploma from the Cleveland Institute of Music. She earned a bachelor’s degree in music from the Sorbonne and a doctorate in conducting from the University of Michigan.