Department of Music

Biography

Active as a conductor of choral, orchestral, and operatic/musical theatre repertoire, Michael Slon is Director of Choral Music and Professor at the University of Virginia, where he leads the University Singers, UVA Chamber Singers, and guest conducts the Charlottesville Symphony. He also serves as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of Virginia, and a conductor and chorusmaster with Charlottesville Opera. Having led the University Singers and Charlottesville Symphony in a gala performance for UVA’s 2017 Bicentennial Launch Celebration (which included Copland’s Appalachian Spring with the Martha Graham Dance Company), he and the Singers presented the regional premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at UVA in 2018. His UVA ensembles have sung for composer Philip Glass, Peter Phillips (director of the Tallis Scholars), and the creators of Les Misérables (Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg), performed with Bobby McFerrin and Meredith Monk, and held virtual master classes with Alice Parker, Jake Runestad, and Eric Whitacre. They’ve also toured Europe, Canada, and the United States, and received more than half a million views on social media platforms.

Believing in the unique power of music to inspire and unite across cultures, and committed to broad programming perspectives, his repertoire has ranged from Palestrina and Bach masses, Verdi’s Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony #4, to Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, and programs featuring African-American composers, Latin-American works, contemporary women composers (including Betinis, Higdon, Powell, and Shaw), and choral music from film and the Broadway stage. In 2024, the Chamber Singers partnered with the UVA Center for Politics for a concert of Campaign Songs, and were joined on stage by Martin Luther King III. His ensembles have commissioned new work from composers including Stephen Paulus, Forrest Pierce, Adolphus Hailstork, Eric Whitacre, and Judith Shatin, and most recently gave the 2024 North American premiere of the Ēriks Ešenvalds St. Luke’s Passion with the composer in residence. For his work with students, UVA's Mead Endowment and Seven Society have both recognized him as an outstanding faculty mentor.

Since 2011, he has also served as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of Virginia. In that time, he has created a series of new artistic partnerships with the chorus, including a 2014 semi-staged production of Bernstein’s Candide with Charlottesville Opera; a 2022 collaboration with the University Singers on Rachmaninoff’s Vespers; performances with the Charlottesville Ballet, regional orchestras and youth choruses; an Adolphus Hailstork-Rita Dove commission for the group’s 50th anniversary (later featured on regional PBS), and a Community Sing-In to benefit local charities. In 2024, he led an all–Beethoven program including the finale of Symphony no. 9 for the 200th anniversary of its premiere. He has also collaborated as an artist with the Virginia Theatre Festival, Buffalo’s Opera Sacra, Victory Hall Opera, the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Staunton Music Festival and Wintergreen Music Festival, a Defiant Requiem (Verdi) performance at the Strathmore Music Center, and returned post–pandemic to Charlottesville Opera to conduct The Sound of Music and the new FestivAll – Arts for All performances at the Ting Pavilion. While serving as Interim Director of the Charlottesville Symphony, he led works including Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, and in 2005, also co-created the University Singers-Symphony Family Holiday Concerts, now a beloved community tradition.   

Prior to UVA, he served as visiting conducting faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory, and assistant conductor of the Cornell University choruses and Cincinnati's May Festival Chorus, where he prepared and co-prepared choruses for concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Also active as a composer, pianist, and writer, his first book – Songs from the Hill – has been cited in a variety of other publications, and his work on Leonard Bernstein has appeared in the Choral Journal, won the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Julius Herford Prize, and appeared in Bernstein in Context (2024) from Cambridge University Press.  As a composer, he has had work presented by the Vocalis Chamber Choir in concert at NYC’s Merkin Hall, and at the 2018 ACDA Eastern Convention.  He holds degrees from Cornell University (where he was named a member of Phi Beta Kappa), and the Indiana University School of Music. 

To follow on Instagram: @michaelslonmusic