Huw Edwards (conductor)

Huw Edwards
Born	South Wales, United Kingdom
Occupation	Conductor

Huw Edwards is a Welsh conductor currently serving as music director of Olympia, Washington's Olympia Symphony Orchestra. Edwards' conducting career began at age seventeen when he became music director of the Maidstone Opera Company in England. He later attended the University of Surrey, where he conducted the college orchestra along with an ensemble that he formed himself. At age twenty-three, he won a conducting competition which sent him to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He then held a lecturer position at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he was also a doctoral candidate. Edwards was conductor and music director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic from 1995 to 2002 followed by the Seattle Youth Symphony from 2002 to 2005. He served as music director of the Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra from 2000 to 2012 and has been with the Olympia Symphony Orchestra since 2002.

Born in South Wales, Edwards moved with his parents to England and sang in choirs as a child. He witnessed his first opera (Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera) at eleven years old when his parents took him to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Seven years later, he was conducting Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta H.M.S. Pinafore on that same podium. Edwards played violin and trumpet through grammar school and high school but abandoned performance for conducting.

Edwards has been conducting since age seventeen when he became music director of the Maidstone Opera Company in England, a position he held for six years. Edwards attended the University of Surrey, where he conducted the college orchestra along with an ensemble that he formed himself. He won a conducting competition in 1988 which sent him to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas at twenty-three years old. There he experienced "culture shock", being "accustomed to the rolling hills of England and the cosmopolitan buzz of London". He held a lecturer position at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he was also a doctoral candidate. Four years later he moved to the Pacific Northwest. Throughout his lifetime, Edwards has received instruction from Anshel Brusilow (Dallas), chorus leader Simon Johnson (London), Eduardo Mata, Barry Wordsworth, and Victor Yampolsky (Northwestern University).

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