Ryan Murray is Associate Conductor of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Modesto Symphony Youth Orchestra and Opera Modesto, and Artistic Director and Conductor of Music in the Mountains. He also directs the orchestra and opera at California State University, Sacramento. He previously served as Music Director of Fresno Grand Opera and as a staff conductor for the Bay Area Summer Opera Theater Institute and The Opera Academy of California. His repertoire spans traditional orchestral and operatic works, pops, movies in concert, and a special emphasis on contemporary American opera.

 

Since 2014, Murray has overseen a nearly five-fold increase in attendance at the Modesto Symphony’s education concerts. He also leads the Modesto Symphony Youth Orchestra, which now serves more than 120 students from the greater Modesto area.

A past winner of the Vienna Philharmonic’s Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors, Murray spent the summer of 2014 in residence with the orchestra at the Salzburg Festival. He won the 2017 American Prize in Opera Conducting for A Streetcar Named Desire and was a 2016 semi-finalist for the Ernst Bacon Memorial Award for the Performance of American Music for Dead Man Walking.

 

An engaging pops conductor, Murray has worked with artists including Storm Large of Pink Martini, Ben Crawford, Ashley Brown, Alli Mauzey, Tony DeSare, and James Tormé. He also conducts film concerts such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Pixar in Concert.

 

A dedicated student of his craft, Murray has studied at the Cabrillo Festival Conductors Workshop, the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Eastman Summer Conducting Institute, and the Aurora Chamber Festival, where he worked with Kurt Masur. He was one of eight conductors invited to Susanna Mälkki’s masterclass in Finland. He holds degrees summa cum laude in Bassoon Performance and Voice Performance from Sacramento State and is pursuing a Master’s in Music Business at Berklee College of Music.