about
Eric Dudley enjoys a multi-faceted career as a conductor, vocalist, pianist and composer deeply engaged in the performance of music both past and present. He is currently in his fifth season as Artistic Director for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the largest and most long-standing ensemble dedicated solely to the presentation of contemporary music on the West Coast. From its founding in 2009, Eric also performed as an original member of the genre-defying vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, touring worldwide and recording a vast array of newly commissioned works with the Grammy Award-winning ensemble. He was a Principal Conductor for the Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music in Australia, and recently served as music director for Roomful of Teeth and Ensemble L’Instant Donné in a production with celebrated director Peter Sellars at the Paris Festival d’Automne.
While living in New York City, Eric conducted and performed with organizations as diverse as Ekmeles and TENET vocal ensembles, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Talea Ensemble, American Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal and the New York Philharmonic. He held positions as Assistant Conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra under Rossen Milanov for several seasons, and his guest conducting engagements have included the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) at Ojai Festival in California, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia, and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
A passionate educator, Eric was on the faculty of Mannes College of Music at the The New School in New York, where he directed the Mannes Prep Philharmonic and The New School Chorus. He moved to the Bay Area in 2016 to direct the orchestra program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he led the SFCM orchestra in concert and taught conducting for a period of three years. He has since been appointed to the full-time faculty of the Conservatory of Music at the University of the Pacific, where he teaches voice and serves as the coach and conductor for Pacific’s Opera Theatre program.
As a pianist and chamber musician, he has performed on numerous occasions with Novus New York (Trinity Wall Street’s new music ensemble) and members of the Cincinnati and Princeton symphony orchestras. His own music has been premiered and recorded by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Quey Percussion Duo, and Roomful of Teeth.
Eric holds a Bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees in orchestral conducting from Yale, where he was the recipient of the Dean’s Prize. He lives in Concord, California with his wife Melanie and their son Ethan.
(August 2022)