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Biography:

Internationally known conductor and teacher Kirk Trevor is a regular guest conductor in the world’s concert halls. Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra from 1985 until 2003, he is currently music Director of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra since 1988, and the Missouri Symphony since 2000. He was Artistic Director of the Muncie Symphony for the 2005-6 season. Renowned as an orchestra builder, 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 fifty-five concerts every season with the Knoxville Symphony and the Knoxville Chamber Orchestra throughout East Tennessee. He has been recognized statewide 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 eight 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. The orchestra has established itself as an innovator in concert formats, with performances in various locations around Indianapolis using audience friendly interactive formats for many concerts. The orchestra is committed to education, sponsoring a Youth Wind Ensemble as well as Funtastic Classics, a new program featuring ensembles with storytellers. 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.
From 1986 until 1989 he served as Music Director of the Dallas Ballet, working with famed director, Fleming Flindt in numerous premieres during his tenure. Trevor appeared as a guest with numerous American ballet companies during the 1980’s including Charlotte Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre and New Jersey Ballet.

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, and Music in the Mountains and Litomysl in the Czech Republic.

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. 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. For the 2005/2006 academic year, he was Director of Orchestras at Ball State University where he conducted the orchestra and opera, as well as teaching graduate conducting. He continues to work with young conductors around the world in master classes and workshops.

Trevor’s relationship with the Czech and Slovak Republics continued, when in 1994 he was named Chief Conductor of the Martinu Philharmonic in Zlin.v 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 new miscellanies with the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and Missouri Symphony.
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 more than forty albums of new American music as part of this ongoing project, including complete albums of music by Lee Actor, 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 and William Wallace. In addition he has recorded new albums with outstanding soloists including Richard Stoltzman, John Manasse, Debra Richtmeyer, Richard Fredrickson, Joshua Pierce and Robert de Gaetano. Trevor has also recorded music for best selling computer games including “Diablo II”. In the fall of 2002, Trevor was named Principal Guest Conductor of the SRSO, and in that capacity led the orchestra in four subscription programs and six recordings including symphonies of Dvorak and Mahler. In the fall of 2006 he begins a new relationship with Naxos records and the SRSO.

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 led the orchestra on an 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. In 2005 Trevor went on to conduct this same work in Israel with the Israel Chamber Orchestra and Chorus in four different cities.
As a guest conductor he has appeared with over forty Orchestras in twelve countries. Recent appearances included the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Estonian National Symphony, Pardubice Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon, Virginia Symphony, Savannah Symphony, Riverside Sinfonia of New Jersey, Sofia Philharmonic and Bern Chamber Orchestra.

In January 2003 he made his London debut with the London Symphony Orchestra returning to conduct them in June. Guest conducting appearances in the past two seasons has seem him on the podiums of the Dayton Philharmonic, the Muncie Symphony, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Wroclaw Philharmonic, the Kosice Philharmonic, the Slovak Sinfonietta, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Orchestra of USP Sao Paulo.
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 a new baby daughter Sylvia and they maintain homes in Bratislava, Indianapolis and Missouri. Trevor’s eighteen-year-old daughter Chloe, is frequently appearing as a solo violinist on the concert stage, sometimes with her father as conductor.