American conductor Kevin Fitzgerald is a formidable musical leader. In July 2023, he won the Special Prize for the Best Performance of the Contemporary Piece at The Mahler Competition. Kevin is the first conductor to win this award, sponsored by the Mahler Foundation, which led to him conducting the world premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch's Con Moto with the Bamberger Symphoniker during the final concert of the competition. In 2021, he was a Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellow, and he has been awarded Career Assistance Grants by the Solti Foundation U.S. for four consecutive years beginning from 2019.
In the 2024-25 season, Kevin will debut with the Oregon Mozart Players as a finalist candidate to be their Artistic Director. He will also return to the Cape Symphony as a Music Director candidate. After his debut last season, he will return to the Jacksonville Symphony subscription series, conducting a program featuring Ravel’s three Spanish-inspired works. He will assist Susanna Mälkki at the New York Philharmonic featuring the U.S. premiere of Luca Francesconi’s DUENDE, a violin concerto written for Leila Josefowicz.
He has been the Associate Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony since the 2022-23, during which he conducted over fifty performances, including a fully-staged production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. In the 2023-24 Season, Kevin made his subscription debut with the Jacksonville Symphony and pianist Joyce Yang, recorded Sean Shepherd's Concerto for Ensemble with the University of Chicago's Grossman Ensemble, and made his subscription debut with the Cape Symphony. Furthermore, Kevin returned to the New York Philharmonic as a cover conductor for three programs, in addition to assisting Stéphane Denève at the St. Louis Symphony.
“In the hands of conducting fellow Kevin Fitzgerald, the gauzy theme and variations of Norgård’s “Dream Play” coalesced into a seamless tone poem.”
Kevin gave numerous performances with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra as a Conducting Fellow in 2021. He was especially featured in the TMC Festival of Contemporary Music, and conducted the world premiere performance of Chinese composer Xinyang Wang's Between the Resonating Abysses, and performed Kaija Saariaho's Graal théâtre with violin soloist Momo Wong. While at TMC, Kevin worked closely with Thomas Adès as his rehearsal conductor for Ligeti's Violin Concerto, as well as stepping in on short notice to conduct Per Nørgård's Dream Play (1975) in his stead.
Kevin founded the ÆPEX Contemporary Performance ensemble in 2015 in order to perform and promote contemporary classical composers from historically under-represented backgrounds. Additionally, Kevin co-produced and conducted “Requiem for Orlando,” a moving musical tribute to the victims of the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL. Planned in under 48 hours, over 400 musical volunteers performed Mozart’s Requiem in Hill Auditorium for a full-capacity audience. He continues to seek ways to use music as an effective and therapeutic vessel for equity, healing, and social change.
