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Steven McDonald, D.M.A.
Director of Orchestral Studies
Director of the University Orchestra
Education
DMA - University of Kansas
BAC - Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam
BM - Boston University
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Originally from Reading, Massachusetts, Steven McDonald is a graduate of the Boston University School for the Arts, the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and the University of Kansas School of Music. His teachers have included Brian Priestman, Nicholas Uljanov, Joop van Zon, and Thomas Dunn for conducting, Craig Rutenberg for vocal coaching, Henk van Eeuwijck and Leo Abbott for piano, and George Faxon for organ.
McDonald has served on the faculties of Boston University, Gordon College and the University of Kansas, and has also served as music director of the baroque ensemble “Musica Modus Vivendi” of Harvard University. While at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he served as conductor of the MIT Chamber Orchestra and the Gilbert and Sullivan Players, and was both founder and music director of the Summer Opera and IAP Orchestra. At the University of Kansas, McDonald served as assistant conductor of the KU Symphony Orchestra, founder and music director of the Camerata and the Chamber Orchestra “Sine Nomine,” and also conducted productions of the KU Opera. A committed educator, he has served as conductor of the Midwest Music Camp String Orchestra at the University of Kansas, and guest conductor of the Missouri All-State High School Orchestra, both in 2009. In 2011, McDonald became the first invited guest conductor/clinician at the Noel Pointer Foundation School of Music in Brooklyn, New York. In addition, he is also the founder and music director of the Lafayette Swing Orchestra of Wakefield, Massachusetts, an ensemble modeled after the great hotel “society orchestras” of the early twentieth century, and which performed regularly at the Harvard Club of Boston during the 1990s.
In August of 2006, McDonald was appointed Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Studies at Ottawa University, and in July of 2007 became music director of the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra.