Evan Harger

Dr. Evan Harger serves as Music Director of the UNC Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he teaches a seminar entitled “What is a Work of Art?” An advocate for new music and living composers, Dr. Harger has served as a Staff Conductor for Global Arts United festivals in Bulgaria, Austria, and Brazil. Additionally, he holds the position of Associate Conductor of the Newfound Chamber Winds. Dr. Harger’s creative activity focuses on reconceptualizing the role of the conductor as essentially the ‘producer’ of an ensemble. Through conceptualizing the Conductor as Producer, we move from a popular model of conducting where Score Study is the process by which a Conductor ‘decides' an interpretation and then ‘imparts’ that interpretation to the ensemble – to a model of conducting that sees Score Study as the equally rigorous study of possibilities in performance, and which stresses the agency of the constituency of the ensemble, rethinking what ‘authority’ looks like in a collaborative ensemble. It also stresses the additional essential roles of the conductor which include: administrator, psychologist, mentor, listener, galvanizer, spokesperson, advocate, teacher, and mediator – which have often been overlooked under past historical concepts of authority. Equally comfortable in front of orchestras, wind ensembles, brass bands, chamber orchestras, and other large instrumental ensembles, Dr. Harger advocates for reinvigorating the concept of ‘instrumental conducting’ pedagogy – rather than distinct wind and orchestra pedagogies – and believes that ones’ conducting gestural technique benefits from experiencing the unique challenges of many different ensembles. Rather than embracing the rather simplistic contrary notions of ‘all conducting is the same’ or ‘there are different techniques for different ensembles’, he prefers the idea that ‘different ensembles have different acoustic, articulative, and phenomenological properties which create unique technical challenges worth exploring.' He’s proud to be an alumnus of the Michigan State University conducting studio, under the tutelage of Prof. Kevin Noe.