DONALD SPIETH, Conductor
has established himself as an outstanding conductor, orchestra builder, and educator. He is currently the Principal Guest Conductor of the Monacacy Chamber Orchestra, having just concluded 26 years as Music Director and Conductor of the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra. For more than 25 years, Spieth also has been Music Director and Conductor of the Schuylkill Symphony Orchestra as well as Adjunct Professor and Music Department Coordinator at Northampton Community College. Spieth came to Pennsylvania as a National Teaching Fellow for Moravian College where he is currently Artist-in-Residence in Music. Spieth has led highly acclaimed New York performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. He has made three internationally distributed recordings and received the prestigious national American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music. Additional artistic highlights have included performances with such internationally known artists as Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Emanuel Ax, Sarah Chang, and Lang Lang, et.al. As an advocate for American music, Spieth, with his various orchestras, has premiered contemporary music through the annual commissioning of local, national, and international composers. He has conducted more than thirty world premieres from composers such as Paul Salerni, Libby Larsen, Paul Moravec, Richard Rodney Bennett, Jan Jurasek, and Kyle Smith, among others. Donald Spieth began his formal training at the University of Iowa where he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in music performance and literature. An accomplished performer, Spieth has been a member of various orchestras and ensembles and has performed in several tours of both the United States and Europe. His conducting teachers include James Dixon, Walter Charles, Ifor Jones, and Sixten Ehrling at Juilliard.
