Kirk Trevor, internationally known conductor and teacher, is a regular guest conductor in the world’s concert halls. Music Director of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra from 1985 until 2003, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra since 1988, and the Missouri Symphony since 2000, he has forged a strong musical partnership with three of America’s leading regional orchestras.
Born and educated in England, he 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 Vilém Tausky. He went on to pursue cello studies in France with Paul Tortelier under a British Council Scholarship and moved to the United States on a Fulbright Exchange Grant. It was there that his conducting skills led him in 1982 to the Exxon Arts Endowment Conductor position with the Dallas Symphony. In 1990 he was 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.
From 1995 to 1999 he was Chief Conductor of the Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra in the Czech Republic, and in 2000 forged a new relationship with the famed Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (SRSO) in Bratislava. With the SRSO he began a new series of recordings of American music for various record companies. To date, he has made 51 albums of new American music. In 2003 he was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the orchestra and took them on a three-week tour of Japan as well as many other concerts throughout Europe. In the spring of 2004 Kirk Trevor led the orchestra on the European Première 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. He has recently recorded symphonies by Dvořák and Mahler with the SRSO, as well as recording movie scores for Hollywood and music for major computer games.
As a guest conductor, he has appeared on the podiums of more than forty orchestras worldwide including the London Symphony Orchestra, and orchestras in Hong Kong, Canada, Israel, Spain, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and throughout the United States. As much in demand as a conducting teacher as a performer, Kirk Trevor was Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Tennessee and has been a guest teacher at universities and conservatories throughout the world. Since 1991 he has been Director of the International Workshop for Conductors held each year in the Czech Republic. For the 2005/6 season he was Director of Orchestras at Ball State University as well as teacher of Graduate conducting.
