Susan Deaver

Artist-in-Residence
Conductor of the University Orchestra
susan.deaver@stonybrook.edu

Susan Deaver, conductor, is the Music Director and Conductor of the University Orchestra at Stony Brook University. She conducts the University Orchestra in a series of orchestral concerts at Staller Center each season and coordinates the annual concerto competition for undergraduate students at Stony Brook University. She has also taught conducting courses and coached chamber music at Stony Brook University and at Manhattan School of Music in both the college and precollege divisions. A frequent clinician and guest conductor for many of the festivals on Long Island, she has been a guest conductor for LISFA and both Nassau & Suffolk All-County Festivals. She is experienced in working with precollege, undergraduate and graduate/DMA students focusing orchestral and chamber music performance and has conducted numerous composers’ reading/recordings Stony Brook University with SBSO along with premiers of student composers’ pieces. 

She was selected to participate in Tanglewood's Conducting Seminar Classes with Gustav Meier, and has guest conducted in Korea, Germany, British Columbia and England. She has been selected to participate in the conducting seminars of the American Symphony Orchestral League, the Conductor's Guild. As an orchestral fellowship student at Tanglewood, she worked with both Leonard Bernstein and Seiji Ozawa. Active in contemporary music, she was a conductor for the Manhattan School of Music's Contemporary Ensemble and performed with the Group for Contemporary Music and the New Music Consort.  As a guest conductor, she has conducted the Washington Chamber Symphony, the Island Chamber Symphony, the Bronx Opera Chamber Orchestra, the Gemini Youth Orchestra, The Seoul Symphony of New York, the Brooklyn Heights Orchestra and contemporary music at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.  Guest conducting in South Korea has included the New International Music Festival at Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, the Pusan Festival Orchestra and the Masan City Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Deaver was the conducting instructor for actor Freddie Highmore for Warner Brothers’ movie August Rush and was a conducting mentor at the 2018 International Women’s Conducting Institute.

She has collaborated in educational residencies with Yo-Yo Ma, the Shanghai Quartet, Imani Winds, members of the Emerson String Quartet, members of the New York Philharmonic and members of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. In addition to the University Orchestra, Susan Deaver was the Music Director and Conductor of the North Shore Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Long Island Youth Orchestra.

As a flutist she was principal flute of the Washington Chamber Symphony at the Kennedy Center for over twenty years, and has performed as flute soloist in the United States, Europe and Korea. Critics have praised her as a flutist with “atmospheric virtuosity” with “golden tones”.  She has performed with New York Virtuosi, Philharmonic Virtuosi, New York Scandia Symphony, Long Island Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Queens Symphony, the ballet orchestras of the Australian Ballet and the Royal Ballet, and on Broadway with the Phantom of the Opera and My Fair Lady. On numerous occasions she performed as a flute soloist at the Kennedy Center with the Washington Chamber Symphony of which she was Principal Flutist.

As a chamber musician, she is the flutist with The Pierrot Consort and is the co-founder/director of the Pierrot Chamber Music Festival which is held annually each July. She has performed chamber music at Tanglewood, the Music Festival of the Hamptons, with the Manhattan Woodwind Quintet (winners of Artists International Competition) and numerous concert series in the metropolitan area. Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees are from Manhattan School of Music where she received her Doctorate in Musical Arts. In addition to Stony Brook University, she is also on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music Precollege. Her doctoral thesis, entitled "The Group for Contemporary Music, 1962-1992," dealt with both the historical and performance aspect of one of America's foremost contemporary music ensembles.