Performances + Events
Kevin Fitzgerald’s approach to his role as New England Conservatory’s new Wind Ensemble Director is a direct reflection of the holistic music education the institution offers all of its students. He’s focused on teaching students “how to perform to a professional standard that is translatable to any ensemble they’re in.”
“The majority of our students who go on to play professionally are probably not going to be necessarily playing all of these wind ensemble pieces every season,” he said, explaining that the student experience is ultimately about “knowing how to sit down and play any piece that’s in front of you, no matter the style or instrumentation.”
In his inaugural concert at NEC, on October 1, Fitzgerald will lead a performance by the Symphonic Winds, an undergraduate ensemble mostly made up of first- and second-year students who’re just starting to imagine what their professional lives might look and sound like.
He’s an eager mentor who understands that “this entire business is an ecosystem of relationships.” As a student, he heard — countless times: The people that you’re around, the people you’re sitting next to, the people in your classes, those are going to be your colleagues. “It’s so true,” he said.
Fitzgerald has spent a decade in the orchestral space. He’s served as associate conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony and assistant conductor of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and led such venerable ensembles as the Utah Symphony and Bamberger Symphoniker. He won the Special Prize for the Best Performance of a Contemporary Work at the 2023 Mahler Competition and has received career assistance grants from the Solti Foundation U.S., among other awards.
“Conducting-wise, my professional experience is all orchestra and new music,” he said, referring to that body of experience and to his founding of ÆPEX Contemporary Performance, a group dedicated to programming works by composers with “historically underrepresented backgrounds.”
Fitzgerald said his goal at NEC is “to reposition the wind ensemble within the context of the larger professional music space.”
“Every orchestra has a wind ensemble in it,” he said, and part of the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary music is wind ensemble repertoire. “I don’t know how you could lead a wind ensemble without having a contemporary music background,” he said.
Fitzgerald is also well versed in wind ensemble traditions.
“My respect for and love for the (wind) ensemble and the repertoire comes from my experiences playing in them at Eastman,” he said.
Fitzgerald studied trumpet and music theory at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and conducting at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & and Dance.
It was Eastman’s Frederick Fennell “who essentially invented the wind ensemble,” Fitzgerald said, reimagining the previously standard model of the symphonic band as a one-player-to-a-part group “that lends itself to individual artistic expression,” as is the case in orchestral wind and brass sections.
And it was at NEC that iconic emeritus faculty member Frank Battisti ’12 hon. DM exponentially grew the repertoire for ensembles of wind and brass instruments by commissioning music from composers whose oeuvres included works for orchestra, opera, and beyond. Emeriti faculty Charles Peltz and William Drury carried on Battisti’s work as the Conservatory’s director and associate conductor of wind ensembles, respectively, after studying with Battisti.
Just as he was mentored during his student days, Fitzgerald looks forward to empowering students at NEC, where his husband, Kurt Tseng Tufts/NEC ’14, associate principal violist of the North Carolina Symphony, earned an undergraduate degree.
Fitzgerald said it’s his responsibility to encourage students to be curious about their craft and to be entrepreneurial. Part of that responsibility is to serve as a role model. Ten years ago, at the outset of his dynamic career, Fitzgerald co-produced and conducted a performance of Mozart’s Requiem in the days after the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. While he was quick to point out that the “Requiem for Orlando” was a community effort, his contribution speaks to his belief in “music as an effective and therapeutic vessel for equity, healing, and social change.”
Fitzgerald is here to share all that he’s learned about music-making and about finding purpose in one’s artistry. He’s here to show students, “You can go out into the world and make something.”
