Meet Our Maestro
Maestro William Henry Curry was appointed Music Director and Conductor of the Durham Symphony Orchestra in May 2009. From 1998 to 2016, he was the Resident Conductor and Summerfest Artistic Director of the North Carolina Symphony.
A native of Pittsburgh, Curry began viola studies with Eugene Reichenfeld at age 11 and began conducting and composing at age 14. After attending the Oberlin Conservatory, he became Assistant Conductor of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. At age 21, when the conductor fell ill, he made his last-minute debut directing that orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony that was hailed by critics and audiences alike. He then embarked on a career conducting major orchestras in the U.S. and overseas. His engagements have included the Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Detroit, and Atlanta Symphonies as well as the Israel Chamber Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Thailand, and the National Orchestra of Taiwan (representing the U.S. State Department and giving workshops on American music.) Maestro Curry has held Resident Conductor posts with the Baltimore Symphony, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and has served as Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis and Atlanta Symphonies.
In 1988 Maestro Curry became the only unanimous prize winner of the prestigious Leopold Stokowski conducting Competition. This award led to his debut at Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra. His first professional recording of Anthony Davis’ opera X: the Life and Times of Malcolm X was nominated for a Grammy Award. More recently, he has been honored by the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission and received the City of Raleigh Medal of the Arts for his achievements in advancing the arts in North Carolina. He received a certificate of achievement from Governor Roy Cooper.
Opera engagements have included the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, the Houston Grand Opera, and the Chicago Opera Theatre—where the Chicago Sun Times proclaimed him “a superb Mozart conductor.” In 2022 he made his debut with the North Carolina Opera in the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s opera about the Underground Railroad, Sanctuary Road. Ballet engagements have included performances of The Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet and the Charlotte Ballet.
Maestro Curry is also a composer, and his works have been played by many of America’s finest orchestras. His Eulogy for a Dream uses Martin Luther King Jr.’s words to accompany a heartfelt tribute to the civil rights leader and was suggested by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. This work has been played by over two dozen orchestras around the world, and in January 2000, it was broadcast nationally on the NPR program In Performance Today. Curry has received commissions from the North Carolina Symphony, the Durham Symphony, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The UNC commission was for Dark Testament, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2022.
A champion of American music, Maestro Curry has conducted premieres by (among others) Joseph Schwantner, William Bolcolm, Lukas Foss, and Adolphus Hailstork. He has worked with a range of artists from Aaron Copland and John Williams to Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald.
In addition, Maestro Curry has been a mentor and a beacon for young musicians at the Peabody Conservatory, the Baltimore School of Arts, and many music schools in the state of North Carolina. As Resident Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony for 20 years, he conducted over a thousand concerts for public school students. He has taught Music Appreciation at William Peace University and for the OLLI-at-Duke adult education series.
Maestro Curry’s memoirs are scheduled to be published by Indiana University Press, and he was recently published as an entry in The Oxford Dictionary of Music.