Timothy Long, Conductor & Pianist
“Turning in a superb performance in the pit, conductor Timothy Long captures the score’s propulsive thrust with his keen pacing and draws the best from the young singers and musicians arrayed before him.”
Timothy Long is a pianist and conductor of Muscogee Creek and Choctaw descent who is Music Director of Opera at the Eastman School of Music.
His early training as a pianist and violinist led to work with singers, and eventually to conducting engagements that have included companies such as Boston Lyric Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Colorado, Utah Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, City Opera Vancouver, Pacific Opera Victoria, The New Group, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Oregon Bach Festival, and the Prague Summer Nights Festival.
After working on Thomas Adès’s operatic tour-de-force, Powder Her Face, Tim was named by Robert Spano to be his assistant conductor for three years at the Brooklyn Philharmonic. He was subsequently named an associate conductor at the New York City Opera for two years.
In the past year, Tim conducted the world premiere of Missing, by Marie Clements and Brian Current, at City Opera Vancouver and Pacific Opera Victoria, the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra with the great dramatic soprano Christine Goerke, Tulsa Opera’s 70th Anniversary Gala starring famed mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, Die Zauberflöte at the Prague Summer Nights Festival, Ricky Ian Gordon’s Tibetan Book of the Dead at the Eastman Opera Theatre, and the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. He has also played numerous recitals including a world premiere by White Mountain Apache violinist/composer Laura Ortman with Navajo noise artist Raven Chacon at National Sawdust, and a concert with baritone Brian Mulligan on the Vocal Arts DC series at the Kennedy Center. Upcoming performances include conducting Don Giovanni at Eastman Opera Theatre, a return to Prague Summer Nights to conduct Le Nozze di Figaro, a tour of Missing in Canada, a workshop with the Trondheim Sinfonietta in Norway, and numerous recitals and masterclasses around the country.
Off-Broadway, he was music director, conductor, and featured pianist for The New Group’s production of The Music Teacher, an “opera within a play” by Wallace Shawn and Allen Shawn. Bridge Records released a recording of this unique show with Parker Posey and Wallace Shawn in the leading roles.
As a pianist and harpsichordist he has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Jordan Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Dvorak Hall in Prague, the Aspen Music Festival, the Moab Music Festival, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Caramoor Festival, and the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago, among many others.
Naxos recently released Tim’s recording of the Dominick Argento song cycles, The Andrée Expedition and From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, with the internationally renowned baritone Brian Mulligan. This recording has been highly lauded, with Opera News stating that he “provides masterfully sculpted renditions of the varied and challenging piano parts, which range from spare and crystalline (evoking the icy North) to rolling and transcendent.”
He lives in New York City and Rochester, NY with his husband, baritone Christopher Herbert, and their sweet basset hound-mix, Pumpkin.