Tony Brandolino, Music Director
Tony Brandolino serves as Music Director of the Liberty Symphony Orchestra and teaches violin and chamber music at William Jewell College. He has appeared as conductor with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Sioux City Symphony, Kansas City Youth Symphony and Saint Joseph Symphony.
A native of suburban Chicago, Tony attended High School at the Interlochen Arts Academy and earned degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He also played violin in the National Repertory Orchestra in Evergreen, Colorado, and in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. Tony studied string quartet performance at the Britten-Pears School for Advanced Musical Study and Aldeburgh Festival in Snape, England. He studied violin with Edgar Muenzer and Myron Kartman at Northwestern and performed in master classes given by the renowned violin teacher Max Rostal. His chamber music coaches included Ray Still and Dale Clevenger of the Chicago Symphony and Robert Marcellus from the Cleveland Orchestra. Brandolino has served as concertmaster of several orchestras including the Liberty Symphony, Augusta (Georgia) Symphony and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. He has performed with pop artists Wayne Newton, Ray Charles, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and The Moody Blues. He appeared with the Spoleto Festival Orchestra on their 1984 Grammy-winning CD (Best New Opera Recording category) of Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra. As a member of the Spoleto Festival Orchestra for six years, Tony performed with conductors Gustav Kuhn, Christian Badea, and Spiros Argiris. He participated in performances with Gian Carlo Menotti, Igor Kipnis, Mikail Barishnikov, Jerome Robbins, American Ballet Theatre and in Joffrey Ballet’s recreation of the Nijinsky choreography for Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. In Spoleto he worked with film directors turned opera directors Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) in Puccini’s Girl of the Golden West and Ken Russell (Altered States) in his controversial staging of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Tony was the recipient of the 2013 American String Teachers Association (Missouri Chapter) College String Educator of the Year Award. |