The Artistic Home Of:
Music Director and Conductor
Kirk Trevor
Internationally known conductor and teacher Kirk Trevor is a regular guest conductor in the world’s concert halls. Trevor was Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra from 1985 until 2003 and now serves as Music Director Emeritus. He has also served as Music Director of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra since 1988, and the Missouri Symphony since 2000. Trevor has forged a strong musical partnership with two of America’s leading regional orchestras. He broadened the musical spectrum of the Knoxville Symphony during his tenure, adding Pops, Family, and Chamber Music series to the orchestra’s season, as well as the highly acclaimed Clayton Holiday Concerts. He conducted more than 55 concerts every season with the Knoxville Symphony and the Knoxville Chamber Orchestra throughout East Tennessee. He has been recognized in Tennessee as having brought a new awareness of classical music to the region. He won the Governor’s Award for the Arts as well as numerous local awards during his tenure.
In Indianapolis, Trevor has created a strong community identity for one of America’s busiest Chamber orchestras. In addition to its nine concert subscription series, the orchestra partners with nearly all of Indianapolis’ major cultural institutions in the field of opera, ballet, chorus, and the visual arts. Trevor was recognized for his outstanding contribution to the arts in the state of Indiana in 1997 in the House of Representatives. In Missouri, Trevor is quickly establishing a community presence with new programs for young people as well as innovative collaborative programs with regional arts groups including theatre companies and visual artists.
Born and educated in England, Trevor trained at London’s Guildhall School of Music where he graduated cum laude in cello performance and conducting. He was a conducting student of the late Sir Adrian Boult and Vilem Tausky. He went on to pursue cello studies in France with Paul Tortelier under a British Council Scholarship and came to the U.S. on a Fulbright Exchange Grant. It was in the U.S. that his conducting skills led him to positions as Assistant Conductor at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Associate Conductor of the Charlotte Symphony and finally in 1982 the Exxon Arts Endowment Conductor position with the Dallas Symphony. He conducted the Dallas Symphony in a wide range of concerts in the U.S. and abroad, working closely on recordings and musical projects with the late Eduardo Mata. He was subsequently named Resident Conductor through the 1987-1988 season. In 1990 he was again recognized as one of America’s outstanding young conductors, winning the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Leonard Bernstein Conducting Competition that led to performances with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
It has been Trevor’s devotion to music education and his involvement in the training and development of new generations of listeners, players, and conductors that he has developed a national following. He has been an innovator in developing concerts for young people that have an energy and relevance. With the KSO he has developed and piloted an STV (Symphony-TV) concert series for junior high school students. He has conducted numerous summer festivals for young musicians, including Sewanee, Dallas Summer Conservatory, Music in the Mountains, and Litomysl in the Czech Republic. From 1990 until 1999 Trevor served as Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Tennessee conducting the Civic Orchestra, the UT Opera, and teaching Graduate Conducting.
Trevor is becoming widely recognized as one of the leading conducting teachers in the world. He has been a master teacher for the American Symphony Orchestra League as well as the Conductor’s Guild. In 1991 Trevor co-founded and has been Artistic Director of the International Workshop for Conductors held in the Czech Republic for a month every summer. IWC is the world’s largest conducting school, each year training over 80 conductors from 20 countries. He is a frequent guest teacher at Northwestern University and in Switzerland, annually giving a week of master classes at the Zurich and Basel Conservatories.
Trevor’s relationship with the Czech and Slovak Republics continued, when in 1994 he was named Chief Conductor of the Martinu Philharmonic in Zlin and continues this season in the position of Principal Conductor. During his tenure, he made six recordings for Koch, Albany, Fatra, Crystal, and Carlton Classics recording works by Joan Tower, David Ott, Victoria Bond, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Karel Husa, among others. In 2000 he added to his discography with a complete recording of Copland’s opera “The Tender Land” for the composer’s 100th anniversary, as well as the Duke Ellington piano concerto, concertos by Niblock and Chihara, and a new miscellany by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.
In 2000 Trevor forged a new relationship with the famed Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava. With the SRSO he began a new series of recordings of American music for a consortium of independent record companies.
To date, he has made fifty-two albums of new American music as part of this ongoing project, including complete albums of music by Karen Amrhein, Florencio Asenjo, Jeremy Beck, James Cohn, Carson Cooman, Roger Davidson, David Dzubay, Richard Englefield, Pete Farmer, Jett Hitt, Frank Loch, Andy Jaffe, A. Paul Johnson, Rami Levin, Dan Locklair, Carl Mansker, William Thomas McKinley, Angleo Mussolino, Dana Perna, Wieslaw Rentowski, Walter Ross, Matt Uelemen, Robert Vinson, William Wallace, and four CDs with world-renowned clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.
In the fall of 2002, Trevor was named Principal Guest Conductor of the SRSO, and in that capacity lead the orchestra in four subscription programs and six recordings. In March and April of 2003 Trevor conducted ten concerts with the SRSO on a tour of Japan. Critics were universal in their praise of the orchestra and Trevor’s leadership. In the spring of 2004, Trevor lead the orchestra on a European Premiere tour of “Oratorio Terezin,” a new oratorio based on the poems of the children of Terezin, the nazi work camp where thousands of children of Jewish artists and intelligentsia were killed.
As a guest conductor he has appeared with over forty Orchestras in twelve countries. Recent appearances included the Israel Chamber Orchestra, San Paolo Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, Dayton Philharmonic, Muncie Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, Wroclaw Philharmonic, Kosice Philharmonic, Slovak Sinfonietta, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and Bern Chamber Orchestra. In January 2003 he made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra returning to conduct them in June.
Trevor is an avid collector, including an extensive collection of nineteenth-century British stamps and an unusually fine collection of antique powder compacts. As an avid sportsman he plays golf and tennis, as well as cricket, whenever he is able to find a game!
Trevor is married to the Slovak harpist Maria Duhova. They have two children – four-year-old Sylvia Elizabeth Trevor, and two-year-old Daniel Christopher Trevor. The Trevor family maintains homes in Columbia, Missouri and Bratislava. Trevor’s 22 year-old daughter, Chloé, is frequently appearing as a solo violinist on the concert stage, sometimes with her father as conductor.