Faculty

Profile

Michael Charry was a member of the conducting staff of The Cleveland Orchestra for nine years under George Szell, whose biography he has written. It was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2011 in hardcover and in paperback in 2014. Mr. Charry was music director of the Nashville (Tennessee) and Canton (Ohio) Symphonies, and the Peninsula Music Festival (Wisconsin). He was also assistant conductor and first oboist of the Rhode Island Philharmonic in Providence. He has been a guest conductor of the orchestras of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Dallas, Syracuse, Louisville, San Antonio, and Kansas City; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Belgian BRT, Vancouver CBC and Swiss Radio Orchestras, the Vancouver Academy Orchestra, the Singapore Symphony, the Oslo Philharmonic, and the Orchestra of the State of Mexico.
Opera credits include the New York City, Santa Fe and San Francisco Spring Operas, Kansas City Lyric Theater, Lake Erie Opera Theater (with the Cleveland Orchestra), Lake George Opera Festival, Netherlands Opera, Holland Festival, and the Boston Lyric Opera. He has conducted for the José Limón Dance Company in the United States, Europe, South and Central America, and the Far East and, in the US, for the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Mr. Charry studied conducting with Pierre Monteux at his school in Maine and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt on a Fulbright scholarship in Hamburg, Germany. He holds BS and MS degrees in orchestral conducting from The Juilliard School of Music in the class of Jean Morel. His piano teachers include Rosalyn Tureck, Arthur Dann, and Josef Raieff, and he studied oboe with Warren Stannard, Robert Zupnik, and Lois Wann,
Mr. Charry has been on the Mannes faculty since 1988 and was Music Director of The Mannes Orchestra and head of Orchestral Conducting from 1989 to 1999.