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Chief Executive and General Director
Michael Barrett is Chief Executive and General Director of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, where he is responsible for the administration and programming year-round and for the Caramoor's Summer International Music Festival. In 2003, building on a career of over twenty-five years of programming and performing experience in the arts, Mr. Barrett assumed his position at Caramoor, where he leads the artistic mission of the Festival.
In the last four seasons, Mr. Barrett has reaffirmed his reputation as an innovator. He has enhanced or implemented programming for a wide variety of ambitious music rarely heard in a festival setting. New programs Mr. Barrett has created include: a composer-in-residence; concerts embracing musical theater and the American songbook; programs for children and families, an Extreme Chamber Music series; and a new Latin-American music initiative, Sonidos Latinos. His programs are known for breaking down barriers between musical genres, reflecting today’s musical currents, and attracting the greatest musical talents from the U.S. and abroad to Caramoor.
Known as a champion of new music and imaginative programming, Mr. Barrett has also programmed numerous new works, world premieres, American premieres, and Caramoor commissions. In 1988, he co-founded, with Steven Blier, the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), which presents a diversity of thematic song recitals in New York City and beyond. In 1992 he co-founded the Moab Music Festival (MMF) with his wife, violist Leslie Tomkins. MMF is a two-week chamber music festival, held at the beginning of September, which, in addition to the classical repertoire, presents works by established and emerging American composers. He is also an Artistic Advisor for the Estate of Leonard Bernstein. From 1994 to 1997, he was the Director of the Tisch Center for the Arts at the 92nd Street Y in New York, where, among other things, he created the widely-acclaimed "Today's Composers" series.
A protégé of Leonard Bernstein, Michael Barrett began his long association with the renowned conductor and composer as a student in 1982. From 1985 to 1990, he served as an assistant conductor to the Maestro. Mr. Barrett has been a guest conductor with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, New York Philharmonic, London Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France among others. He also has served variously as conductor, producer, and music director of numerous special projects, the world premiere of Volpone by John Musto, which took place at Wolf Trap in 2004; Hopper's Wife by Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie at the Long Beach Opera, and most recently Lucrezia and Bastianello - a double bill of one-act comic operas by William Bolcom and John Musto.
Dedicated to bringing music to children and their families, Mr. Barrett is active in the creation of new educational programs for symphony orchestras. With Jamie Bernstein, he has created over eight narrated young people’s programs for orchestra, ranging from American composers (Copland and Bernstein) to Latin music, and the European classics. These programs have been performed throughout the United States, Asia, Europe, and in Cuba.
Mr. Barrett’s discography includes: Spanish Love Songs, recorded live at Caramoor with Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Steven Blier, and Joseph Kaiser (2007); Live from the Moab Music Festival (2003, 1999); Evidence of Things Not Seen (Ned Rorem) which received a Grammy nomination (New World Records, 1999); Aaron Kernis: 100 Greatest Dance Hits (New Albion, 1995); Brooklyn Philharmonic, Humbert Lucarelli, oboeist (Koch Classics, 1993); On the Town (Deutsche Grammaphon, 1992) associate conductor/pianist; Kabbalah (Koch Classics, 1990) by Stewart Wallace/Michael Korie; Schumann Lieder with Lorraine Hunt and Kurt Ollman (Koch, 1990), and Arias and Barcarolles (Koch, 1989) by Leonard Bernstein (Grammy Award).
Mr. Barrett was born in Guam and raised in California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, and received his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He did post-graduate work at the Hartt School of Music. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter Emma.
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