Ms.
Hicks’s past positions include Music Director of the Westminster
Orchestra, Resident Conductor of the Florida Philharmonic, Assistant
Conductor of the Reading Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor
of the Philadelphia Singers, the chorus of the Philadelphia Orchestra,
whom she has led in radio broadcasts heard nationwide.
She
has also been Music Director of the Hawaii Symphony, an ensemble
she founded in 1991 in her hometown of Honolulu, which she
led
for five seasons.
Ms.
Hicks has guest-conducted extensively both in the States and
abroad, including the Silesian Philharmonic
in Poland, the Tokyo Philharmonie, the chamber players of
the Verbier Festival Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia,
the Richmond Symphony and the Charleston Symphony. In auditions
and workshops, she has led the Symphony Orchestras of Houston,
Indianapolis and Jacksonville, the Cleveland Orchestra and
the
Buffalo Philharmonic.
In
February of 2002 Ms. Hicks was invited to Japan by the New National
Theatre Tokyo, where she acted as assistant conductor to a production
of Mozart’s
Die Zauberflote. She has performed Verdi’s Aida with the East Slovak State
Opera Theater and was a coach and conductor at the Moravian Theater in Oloumoc,
Czech Republic. Her extensive work with the Curtis Opera Studio include performances
of Poulenc’s Dialogue des Carmelites and numerous vocal concerts; she led
the Opera Studio in a production of Handel’s Alcina in April 2005.
A
committed proponent of the performance of new music, Ms. Hicks
regularly led the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in readings, recordings
and performances
of contemporary
works. In addition to premiering works by young composers from both the Curtis
Institute and the University of Pennsylvania (as coordinator and conductor
of the Penn Composers Project), she has collaborated with Ned Rorem and Richard
Danielpour. She has also conducted performances with Composers in the Shape
of
a Pear (Cleveland), premiering avant-garde works, and has been a guest conductor
of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.
In
addition to her Staff Conductor position, Ms. Hicks was a member
of the Faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music from 2000-2005.
As Staff Conductor
she regularly
prepares the Symphony Orchestra of the Curtis Institute for readings and
concerts with leading conductors including Wolfgang Sawallisch and Sir
Simon Rattle.
Her work with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra led to a one-season appointment
as assistant
conductor to the UBS Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra, an ensemble that
she trained intensively for Music Director James Levine.
Sarah
Hatsuko Hicks was born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in Honolulu,
HI. Trained on both the piano and viola, she was a prizewinning
pianist by
her early teens.
She received her BA magna cum laude from Harvard University as a composition
major; her AIDS Oratorio was premiered at Harvard University in May of
1993 and received a second performance at the Fogg Art Museum. She holds
an Artists’ Degree
in conducting from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with renowned
pedagogue Otto-Werner Mueller.
Ms.
Hicks’s talents have been recognized
with numerous prizes and scholarships; she received the Thomas Hoopes
Prize for composition and Doris Cohen Levy Prize for conducting from
Harvard University,
and she was the recipient of the Helen F. Whitaker Fund Scholarship and
a Presser Award during her time at Curtis.
In
her spare time, Ms. Hicks enjoys running, yoga, and her two large
dogs; she is also lead vocalist for a pop/punk band, Cowpath 40. |