Kevin Fitzgerald

As the 2021 Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Fellow and three-time recipient of Career Assistance Grants from The Solti Foundation U.S., Kevin Fitzgerald is at the forefront of the next generation of conductors. In addition to his post in Jacksonville, Fitzgerald has recently guest conducted the Rochester Philharmonic, North Carolina Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Pittsburgh and the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra. In his commitment to uplifting communities through music, Fitzgerald conducted a concert of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 2017 with musicians from the Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids Symphonies in response to the federal travel ban limiting immigration. Raising over $10,000, the funds were donated to the International Rescue Committee and Freedom House Detroit, organizations which both support refugees.

In 2016, he also co-organized and conducted an impromptu performance in under 48 hours as a dedication to the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The event, known as “Requiem for Orlando,” featured over 400 volunteer musicians performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626 and a full-capacity audience in Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium. University of Michigan Professor Emeritus George Shirley sang the tenor solo role and shared this about the performance: “I assure you that the precision, musicality and interpretative incisiveness defining Fitzgerald’s leadership produced from all a result no less impressive than that I have experienced as a soloist in performances with Herbert von Karajan and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos.”

Fitzgerald founded the Michigan-based contemporary music ensemble ÆPEX Contemporary Performance in 2015, which performs music by under-represented, 20^th and 21^st century composers.

Fitzgerald received his bachelor’s degrees in Trumpet and Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with James Thompson, Mark Scatterday and Brad Lubman. Under the tutelage of Kenneth Kiesler, he received his master’s degree from the University of Michigan. Since then, he has participated in masterclasses with Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony, with Andris Nelsons and Alan Gilbert at Tanglewood and with Matthias Pintscher at the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra.