Alexander Mickelthwate

Alexander Mickelthwate is a conductor appearing with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic across a full season of programs, from Gershwin and Rachmaninoff to Ghibli film scores and Beethoven's Ninth. He directs concerts that mix orchestral staples with film music, jazz-inflected works, and vocal soloist showcases, aimed at drawing in listeners of many backgrounds.

Across this run of concerts, expect a conductor comfortable moving between very different sound worlds in a single evening. One program pairs Mussorgsky's brooding "Night on Bald Mountain" with a full choral setting of Fauré's Requiem and an orchestral arrangement of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," while another sets Ravel's fairy-tale suite "Mother Goose" alongside a modern cello concerto drawing on Chinese folk and film idioms. He also leads a night built entirely around Joe Hisaishi's animated film scores, followed by Tchaikovsky's turbulent Fourth Symphony, and closes the season with Beethoven's Ninth. Listeners can expect programs built around contrast and accessibility, pairing familiar orchestral repertoire with crossover and popular material, concerto showcases for piano, violin, cello, and marimba, and large-scale choral and vocal works requiring a firm sense of pacing and balance across big forces.