New York-based Conductor Michael C. Haigler has been with Winter Harbor since 2020, conducting performances of La Serva Padrona, The Impresario, Die Fledermaus, and Marriage of Figaro. He has also conducted full productions of Hansel and Gretel, Albert Herring, La gazza ladra, and Fra Diavolo with Bronx Opera (NYC); The Marriage of Figaro and Menotti’s The Medium with Opera Company of Brooklyn (NYC); Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at U.T. Knoxville (TN); Carmen, Don Giovanni, Elixir of Love, and Merry Wives of Windsor with Cartersville Opera (GA); Amahl and the Night Visitors at Christ Church (NY); and youth operas The Second Hurricane (Copland), and The Black Spider (Judith Wier) with Sarasota Opera (FL). He has also conducted more than two dozen musicals, including Pirates of Penzance, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Brigadoon, Chicago, Kiss Me Kate, Oklahoma, Once Upon a Mattress, She Loves Me, Anything Goes, Little Shop of Horrors, Lucky Stiff, The Full Monty, and his own musicals The Business of Passion and Card-Bored, composed with fellow thespian Dexter Brigham.
 
Outside of opera and theater, Mr. Haigler has been a featured conductor with the National Chorale (at Lincoln Center), the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble (NYC), the Midland Center for the Arts (MI), Lehman Stages Drama (NYC-Bronx), the Sarasota Pops Orchestra (FL), the Seniors Orchestral Society of New York (NYC), the Larchmont Symphonia (NY), the Westchester Chorale (NY), and the Hudson Valley Chorale (NY), among others. He has premiered more than a dozen new works, including the world premieres of Larchmont Woods (for violin and orchestra) by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, highlights of Micha Dutka’s holocaust-centered opera Liebovar, and most recently the anthem The Windows by English composer Grayston Ives.
 
Mr. Haigler graduated magna cum laude from the Eastman School of Music, and also studied in Moscow with the International Fine Arts Institute, and at the National Music Camp at Interlochen. He recently became an Associate (AAGO) of the American Guild of Organists (earning the highest score on the nation on the written test), and has served since 2005 as Music Director at Christ Church Episcopal in Oyster Bay, NY, the church Theodore Roosevelt attended during his presidency. There he founded the Christ Church Festival Orchestra with which he has conducted requiems by Mozart, Fauré, Brahms, and Rutter, and symphonies including Mendelssohn’s Italian, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Mahler’s Resurrection (complete). In 2018 he had the honor of conducting Daniel Hyde and the boy choir of St. Thomas Fifth Avenue in a collaborative performance at Christ Church.
 
Mr. Haigler also holds positions as Chorus Master with the Bronx Opera, and co-director of Pianos on the Point, a summer workshop at Point Counterpoint in Vermont. As recently appointed Music Director of the Long Island Choral Society, he has conducted orchestral performances of Handel’s Messiah, the coronation anthem Zadok the Priest, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, and most recently, a 250th Birthday Gala concert for Ludwig van Beethoven (postponed from 2020) featuring the Choral Fantasy, Elegiac Song, Egmont Overture, and highlights from the 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 9th Symphonies.
 
Mr. Haigler was a North American finalist in Lorin Maazel’s international conducting competition for young conductors, and has also won several awards as a pianist and composer, including the Atlanta Steinway Society competition. Mr. Haigler was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and now lives in Manhattan with his wife, pianist Arielle Levioff, and their 3-year old son Noah.   For more information, see www.ConductorMichael.com.