Conductor Michael C. Haigler is thrilled to be involved with the Winter Harbor Festival! Mr. Haigler is a conductor of operatic, orchestral, and choral music, as well as a pianist, organist, published author and composer, and teacher. He holds a magna cum laude performance degree from the Eastman School of Music where he studied conducting with David Effron and Donald Hunsberger, and is an alumnus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, and the International Fine Arts Institute in Moscow.
 
He currently serves as Music Director at Christ Church in Oyster Bay, Long Island, home to the Christ Church Festival Orchestra with which he has conducted requiems by Mozart, Fauré, Brahms, and Rutter, and symphonies such as Mendelssohn’s Italian, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Mahler’s Resurrection (complete). Mr. Haigler also holds positions as Artistic Director of the Hudson Valley Chorale, Assistant Conductor and Chorus Master at the Bronx Opera, and co-director of Pianos on the Point, a new summer workshop in Vermont.
 
Outside of opera, Mr. Haigler has been featured as a guest conductor with the National Chorale (at Lincoln Center), the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble (NYC), the Midland Center for the Arts (MI), the Sarasota Pops Orchestra (FL), the Seniors Orchestral Society of New York (NYC), the Larchmont Symphonia (NY), and the Westchester Chorale (NY), among others.
 
But he has spent most of his career in the opera world, conducting full productions with the Bronx Opera (NY), the Opera Company of Brooklyn (NY), the University of Tennessee Opera Theater (Knoxville), the Sarasota Youth Opera (FL), New Camerata Opera (NYC), the Cartersville Opera (GA), the Hudson Guild Theater (NYC), the New York Metro Vocal Arts Ensemble (NYC), and Lehman Stages Theater (Bronx), and has served as assistant conductor with Atlanta Opera, Sarasota Opera (FL), Virginia Opera, Knoxville Opera (TN), and The North Shore Music Festival (NY). Among the operas he has conducted are Albert Herring, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Carmen, Don Giovanni, the Elixir of Love, Fra Diavolo, The Impressario, La gazza ladra, The Marriage of Figaro, The Medium, and Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in addition to the youth operas The Second Hurricane (Copland), and The Black Spider (by Judith Wier).
 
Equally at home in music theater, Mr. Haigler has led more than two dozen productions with “Festival 56”, Illinois’ largest summer theater program, including Anything Goes, Brigadoon, Chicago, The Full Monty, Kiss Me Kate, Little Shop of Horrors, Lucky Stiff, Oklahoma, Once Upon a Mattress, The Pirates of Penzance, The Sound of Music, She Loves Me, and The Business of Passion, which he co-wrote with fellow thespian Dexter J. Brigham.
 
In 2001 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, including the Atlanta Steinway Society competition.
 
Mr. Haigler was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and now lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Arielle Levioff.   For more information, see www.ConductorMichael.com.