Margery Deutsch

Education

MM, Orchestral Conducting, SUNY Stonybrook
MA, Musicology, UC Santa Barbara
BA, Flute, Vocal Performance, SUNY Buffalo

Biography

Professor Emeritus Margery Deutsch was Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 1984 - 2012. Under her direction, the orchestra performed at the Chicago Symphony Center, in Madison at the Wisconsin Music Educators Association State Conference, for the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Wisconsin Alliance for Composers, and throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. In March, 2012 they performed at Carnegie Hall as part of the 2012 New York International Music Festival.

Deutsch serves as the Music Director of UWM’s University Community Orchestra, an ensemble of over 100 musicians ranging in age from 12 to 98. The orchestra is comprised of college, high school, and middle school students and community members. UCO performs three concerts a year and plays a combination of classical, light classical and pops repertoire.

Prior to coming to Milwaukee, Deutsch served as Music Director of the Shreveport (LA) Symphony where she conducted classical, chamber orchestra, pops and children’s concerts, as well as operas. Versed in both orchestral and choral repertoire, she was Music Director of the Long Island Singers Society and, in Milwaukee, has guest conducted the Master Singers, Bel Canto Chorus, Milwaukee Choristers, Lawrence University Choir, Milwaukee Children’s Choir and the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus.

Deutsch has been a frequent guest conductor for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Youth, Children’s, and Family concert series. In addition, she has worked with the Sheboygan Symphony, Aurora University’s Music by the Lake Opera Theater, Women’s Philharmonic (CA), Plymouth (MI) Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Charleston (SC) Symphony, Nebraska Sinfonia, Monroe (LA) Symphony, South Dakota Symphony, and the all-state orchestras of New York, Massachusetts, Kansas, Missouri, Washington, Minnesota, Montana, Delaware and Maine, as well as numerous district festivals throughout the country.

Deutsch has been Music Director of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra’s Senior Symphony since 1987. MYSO, the largest youth orchestra program in America, is recognized as one of the premiere youth orchestras in the country. Under her direction, the Senior Symphony toured Prague and Vienna in 2012, performing at Dvorak Hall in the Rudolfinum, the Musikverein’s Golden Hall, and the Great Hall of Vienna’s Konzerthaus. In addition, they were chosen to perform on the Gala Winners’ Concert as part of the 2012 Summa Cum Laude International Youth Music Festival. Past tours include concerts in the Pacific Northwest, China, Austria, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Canada and Scotland, where the orchestra performed as part of the Festival of British Youth Orchestras and the Edinburgh Festival. In June 2000, they were chosen as one of only five U.S. youth orchestras to participate in the National Youth Orchestra Festival in Sarasota, Florida. Deutsch has conducted the orchestra in performances at Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, the Wisconsin Music Educators Conference (North Central Division), and the Mid-West International Band and Orchestra Clinic. Deutsch and the orchestra were selected by famed bassist and author Barry Green (The Inner Game of Music) to serve as the demonstration orchestra for his series of ensemble workbooks and videotape. In 2007, MYSO received a “Meet the Composer” grant through Music Alive and the American Symphony Orchestra League for which Deutsch conducted the world premiere of a newly commissioned work by composer Jeffrey Mumford.

Deutsch is actively involved with high school-age musicians throughout the country and is in frequent demand as a guest conductor, clinician and adjudicator. She has served four terms on the Board of Directors of the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Youth Orchestra Division, which helps establish national policies for youth orchestras.

The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Deutsch received the 2001 Milwaukee Civic Music Association Award for Excellence in Contributions to Music and the 1990 UWM Undergraduate Teaching Award. She has been awarded conducting fellowships and scholarships from the Aspen Music Festival, the Academia Chigiana in Siena, Italy and the Nebraska-based “Festival of a Thousand Oaks.” She was also invited to participate in the conducting seminar at Tanglewood where she took master classes with Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa and Colin Davis. Her other teachers include Thomas Briccetti, Franco Ferrarra, Bruno Bartoletti, Piero Bellugi, Sergiu Commisiona and Dennis Russell Davies; she has also studied flute with Samuel Baron and voice with Jan DeGaetani. A native New Yorker and Regents Scholar, she holds a Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting, a Master of Arts degree in Musicology, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Flute and Vocal Performance.