Jeffrey Grogan
Conductor

American conductor Jeffrey Grogan continues his role as Education and Community Engagement Conductor with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for the 2007-2008 season. He leads the NJSO in a variety of concerts including Family Concerts, Summer Parks, and Concerts for Young People. He is also a frequent host of the “Classical Conversations” and “Post-Concert Chats” series.
His humanistic leadership style, coupled with a strong command of skills as a musical communicator, has earned him an impressive reputation with audiences and music programs throughout the country. Considering his work with young musicians as one of the cornerstones of his career, Grogan currently continues this commitment with the Greater Newark Youth Orchestra.

During his final season with the Ithaca College Orchestras, he worked with several colleagues to present the 2006 Gospel Music Festival. Over one hundred African-American students from the Washington D.C., New York City and Syracuse areas participated. Mr. Glenn Burleigh from Okalahoma City had the following to say:"I've NEVER seen or heard anything like it. A Spiritual Tornado swept through the Ithaca College Campus in Ithaca, New York that flattened the notions that people of many races couldn't sing gospel music together”.

Prior to his appointment with the NJSO, Grogan was Director of Orchestras and Associate Professor at the Ithaca College School of Music (New York). In addition to leading Ithaca’s graduate orchestral conducting program, he took the orchestra to its Avery Fisher Hall debut in April of 2005 and led the ensemble in its most recent concert programs in the United Kingdom.

He has recently led the Indiana University Summer Camps Orchestra, the New Jersey and Oregon All-State Orchestras, the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestra Summer Festival, the Michigan Youth Arts Festival Orchestra, the Texas Tech Summer Festival Orchestra, the California All-State Festival Orchestra (Cal-Poly State), Texas Region 23 and 24 Festival Orchestras, and served as clinician for the University of New Mexico, Indiana State University, the Performing Arts Institute of Indianapolis, and public school programs in Indiana, New York, Texas, and Wisconsin. This season, he will appear with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Greater Newark Youth Orchestra, the Texas All-State Orchestra, Lamar University, among other engagements nationwide.

Grogan’s dedication to new music manifests itself through recent collaborations with Robert Beaser, Michael Colgrass, Dana Wilson and Karel Husa. In 2004, the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra commissioned and gave the world premiere of Scott McAllister’s Music from the Redneck Songbook, a work inspired by life in the American south.

Grogan was previously on faculty at the University of Michigan and at Baylor University. He has served as conductor and music director of the Waco Symphony Youth Orchestra, as well as assistant conductor and pre-concert lecturer for the Waco Symphony Orchestra.
Grogan is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Michigan.