DR. ANDREW M. KURTZ enters his sixteenth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Gulf Coast Symphony. He was the winner of the prestigious 2007 “Performing Artist of the Year” Angel of the Arts Award. Kurtz is also General & Artistic Director and founder of the Center City Opera Theater, a professional opera company in Philadelphia, where he has led nearly four dozen productions, including regional premieres of Adamo’s Little Women, Floyd’s Of Mice and Men, and the world premieres of Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (chamber orchestra version) and Peter Westergaard’s The Always Present Present.

Kurtz’s conducting has been called “passionate, expansive, expert, and musical.” Kurtz’s repertoire encompasses a wide range of music styles from baroque to contemporary, and multiple genres including opera, symphonic, ballet, musical theater, jazz, cantorial and symphonic pops.

Kurtz is the international tour conductor of CANTORS: A Faith In Song, featuring three of the world’s leading Cantors: Alberto Mizrahi, Naftali Herstik and Benzion Miller. Kurtz is also Music Director of the Florida Jewish Philharmonic Orchestra. He serves as Producing Artistic Director of Synergy Productions, a professional musical theater company in Southwest Florida.

Kurtz served on the Board of the Conductors Guild and was editor of their quarterly newsletter Podium Notes. An avid arts educator, Maestro Kurtz served as Resident Music Director of the Jr. Session at the Luzerne Music Center for eight summers, where he led the student orchestras and taught conducting. Kurtz currently serves as the President-elect of the Board of the Lee County Alliance for the Arts.

Kurtz’s 2010-2011 season includes a dozen concerts with the Gulf Coast Symphony and the world premiere of new opera by Pulitzer Prize winner composer Paul Moravec, called Danse Russe, with an original  libretto by Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout with the Center City Opera Theater.  He will also led new productions of Don Pasquale, Cosi fan tutte, and  the North American Premiere of Edward Rushton’s The Shops, plus workshops of a half dozen other new operas currently in development as part of the Center City Opera Theater’s New Opera Creative Development project.

Kurtz has been a regular guest conductor with the Charlotte Symphony. Previous seasons saw Kurtz’s debuts with the Gonzaga Symphony Orchestra (Spokane, WA) and the International Master Musicians Orchestra. He made his New York City conducting debut with the Metropolitan Repertory Ballet in a Jazz Ballet, “Sinatra & Swing” at the TRIBECA Performing Arts Center.

As a 2001 First Prize winner of the Accademia Dell’Arte di Firenze International Conducting Competition, Kurtz made his European conducting debut with the Dell’Arte Symphonietta in Florence, Italy, and he is a former staff conductor at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv.
Highlights of the various conducting posts to his credit include work with the Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Pennsylvania Opera Theater, The Pennsylvania Ballet, the Ash Lawn-Highland Opera Festival and the Ocean City Pops.

Kurtz completed his Doctoral studies in conducting at the Peabody Conservatory and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Virginia where he received his Master’s degree in Music History and a Bachelor of Arts in music and drama.