Richard Hynson was appointed music director of the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra in March 2006. Since 1988, Hynson has served as music director of the Bel Canto Chorus and Orchestra. Also in demand as a guest conductor, Hynson’s past engagements include performances with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Skylight Opera Theatre, and the Racine, Sheboygan, and Waukesha Symphony Orchestras. Hynson has conducted at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where he led a large, national festival chorus and orchestra in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem.
Hynson has led tours to countries throughout Europe and Canada. He and members of Bel Canto presented critically acclaimed performances at the Spoleto Music Festival in Italy, at the Festivals of Troyes and Rheims in France, at the Llangollen Festival in Wales, and at the Elora and Huntsville Festivals in Canada.
Hynson and the Bel Canto Choral Artists have performed with Luciano Pavarotti at the United Center in Chicago and with Sarah Brightman in Milwaukee. On September 11, 2002, Hynson conducted a communitywide performance of Mozart’s Requiem, in conjunction with the worldwide Rolling Requiem Project. More than 200 singers and 40 instrumentalists performed on this concert, for an audience of more than a thousand at Milwaukee's Basilica of St. Josaphat.
In addition to his work as a conductor and educator, Hynson is a composer. He has written a substantial body of published choral, vocal, and ensemble works, many of which he has recorded. The U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants have frequently performed Hynson’s In the Midst of Life, composed in response to the events of September 11, including, most notably, in New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall for the national conference of the American Choral Directors Association. In January 2005, his choral work, Training Wheels, was performed at the Wisconsin Choral Directors Association’s state convention.
Stephen Colburn, Founding Music Director (1973-2003)
Stephen Colburn, principal oboist with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, founded the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra in 1973. Ask him why, and he would simply say, "It's the music."
Mr. Colburn came to Milwaukee to join the symphony as principal oboist in 1966. In doing so, he became the symphony’s youngest member as well. It wasn’t long before Mr. Colburn blended his love of music with Milwaukee’s unique architectural history by presenting a series of free, outdoor wind ensemble concerts performed at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, an Italian Renaissance villa that perches atop bluffs overlooking Milwaukee’s Lake Michigan shoreline.
These early concerts led to Mr. Colburn’s founding of Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra. During his 28 years of leadership as the MCO’s music director and conductor, Mr. Colburn guided the MCO to a place of prestige within the Milwaukee community through the exceptional performances presented under his baton. In December 2003, Mr. Colburn returned to the MCO as a guest conductor for the MCO’s celebratory 30th anniversary season, presenting a concert for which he and the orchestra were recognized for “... an energized reading, full of the nuance and character the music demands.”
Mr. Colburn remains active on Milwaukee’s music scene, as principal oboist for the Milwaukee Symphony, and beyond. His creative spirit and desire to enrich the lives of others through his love of music also led him and his wife, soprano Marlee Sabo, to found the Washington Island Music Festival in Door County, Wisconsin, more than a dozen years ago, which he also guided to a position of prominence.
Mr. Colburn also is active as an educator and teacher, with several of his former students advancing to significant orchestral and teaching positions throughout the United States. In April, 2002, Mr. Colburn was recognized by the Civic Music Association of Milwaukee, with its Distinguished Citizen Award.
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Richard Hynson
Conductor, Composer, and Educator
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