Dan Allcott's Career Achievements

In September 2011 Dan Allcott will be starting his second season as music director of the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association.

In late 2009 the Board of Directors of the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association selected Dan Allcott as the new music director of ORCMA and conductor of the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra and Oak Ridge Chorus for the 2010-2011 season.

Allcott had been music director and principal conductor of the Atlanta Ballet for 10 years since 2000. He remains director of orchestra studies at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, where he is a professor of conducting.

"Dan Allcott is a perfect fit for our arts organization," said Scott Eddlemon, past president of the ORCMA board of directors and ORSO's principal timpanist. "The board approved Maestro Allcott unanimously. He will bring to the symphony and chorus program the experience, expertise, and enthusiasm that the Oak Ridge community and surrounding area expect."

Allcott was studying at Indiana University for a doctorate in conducting and teaching it as an associate instructor when the Atlanta Ballet hired him in spring 2000. According to John McFall, artistic director of the Atlanta Ballet, "Dan not only revitalized the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra but also led daring collaborations with the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Choir, Indigo Girls, Michael O'Neal Singers, and many other non-traditional ballet partners."

Susan Elliott, writing for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, remarked, "Dan Allcott deserves major credit for metamorphosing the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra."

Allcott conducted his final performance as music director of the Atlanta Ballet in February 2010. Since joining the company, he conducted more than 300 performances.

Allcott has conducted the Indianapolis and Dallas symphony orchestras, as well as regional orchestras and educational orchestras. In the fall of 2009 he made his conducting debut with the Asheville Lyric Opera in its production of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.

A well-known educator in this state, he is president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American String Teachers Association. He has conducted festival orchestras throughout the state and for the Governor's School for the Arts.

Since 2003 Allcott has been music director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra in Cookeville. With the Bryan Symphony he has re-instituted annual education concerts for fourth-grade students and produced four staged operatic productions. He also conducts the orchestras of Tennessee Tech.

Allcott studied conducting and cello performance at the world-famous Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. While a graduate student there he acquired additional conducting experience as associate conductor and director of education with the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and conducting fellow of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

In August 1998 he was named the first Herbert von Karajan American Austrian Foundation conducting fellow at the Salzburg Festival.