Erin Freeman

Erin Freeman is a conductor who works regularly with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, credited there as a chorus director, and also appears on the podium at the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Her upcoming St. Louis dates include large choral-orchestral works and holiday and outdoor pops programs, while in Toledo she leads a family Halloween concert with a live film-style score.

Freeman's St. Louis appearances show a conductor comfortable moving between weighty choral repertoire and crowd-pleasing pops. The Shostakovich program pairs two twentieth-century works for chorus and orchestra, Mendelssohn's Psalm setting and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, with Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, a wartime work built from long, unsettled string lines and sudden eruptions of brass. Her Forest Park outdoor concert swings from Respighi's tone poem about Rome's pine trees to Beethoven's pastoral Sixth Symphony, spirituals, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Star Wars marches, the kind of program built for a lawn audience rather than a concert hall. In Toledo she conducts a score written to accompany the Sleepy Hollow story, suggesting she is comfortable leading music timed closely to narration or images. Listeners can expect precise choral balance in the serious repertoire and brisk, audience-facing pacing in the lighter programs.