Michael C. Haigler, Music Director
Conductor and pianist Michael C. Haigler is thrilled to be joining SOLI! Opera has always been a primary staple of his career. He has conducted productions of Abduction from the Seraglio, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Marriage of Figaro, The Impresario, Die Fledermaus, and La Serva Padrona with Winter Harbor Music Festival (Maine); Idomeneo, 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 Oyster Bay (NY); and youth operas The Second Hurricane (Copland) and The Black Spider (Judith Wier) with Sarasota Opera (FL). In addition, he has conducted more than two dozen musicals and operettas, including Yeomen of the Guard, H.M.S Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, Die Fledermaus, The Gypsy Princess, 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.
Mr. Haigler currently holds conducting positions with the Bronx Opera, the Long Island Choral Society, the Gilbert and Sullivan Light Opera Company of Long Island, and the Winter Harbor Music Festival. As the music director here at Christ Church in Oyster Bay, he founded the Christ Church Festival Orchestra, with which he has conducted requiems and masses by Mozart, Fauré, Brahms, Haydn, Duruflé, Schubert, and Rutter, and symphonies including Mendelssohn’s Italian, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Mahler’s Resurrection (complete).
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 music directed 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 the anthem The Windows, by English composer Grayston Ives (commissioned by Christ Church).
Mr. Haigler graduated magna cum laude from the Eastman School of Music, and also studied in Moscow with the International Fine Arts Institute. He was also a North American finalist in Lorin Maazel’s international conducting competition, 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 young son Noah. (more at www.ConductorMichael.com.)