Dan Allcott - Inspirations Sept 27th

Dan Allcott, Bio



Since moving to Tennessee in 2003 Dan Allcott has become widely known as an outstanding conductor and educator. In addition to his position as Music Director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra in Cookeville, he has held leadership positions with Asheville Lyric Opera, Tennessee Philharmonic (Murfreesboro) and the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association, where he was Music Director from 2010-2012. He has enjoyed working with musicians and composers from across the state, as well as bringing internationally known and award-winning soloists to Tennessee audiences. Dan has conducted world premiers by Tennessee composers Stefan Freund, Rachel DeVore Fogarty, Mark Harrell, and Greg Danner, and was an original commissioner of the League of American Orchestra's initial "Made in America" project, giving the Tennessee premier of a work by Joan Tower. In the Spring of 2019 he conducted the world premier of Lucas Richman’s “Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply” with the Oak Ridge Symphony and Chorus, repeating the work in Cookeville in 2022.



In 2010 Dan concluded a 10-year association with the Atlanta Ballet, where he conducted more than 300 performances as Music Director and Principal Conductor and led daring collaborations with diverse groups such as 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." Among the other orchestras he has conducted are the Indianapolis and Dallas Symphonies, the Danish Radio Orchestra, Eastern Sierra Chamber Orchestra, Asheville Lyric Opera and Orchestra Iowa, and he is the former Artistic Advisor for Eastport Strings in Maine. He has conducted festival orchestras for young people throughout the Southeast and serves on the cello faculty of SummerKeys in Maine, and the Tennessee Cello Workshop in Knoxville. Professor of Music and Director of Orchestra Studies at Tennessee Tech, Dan was awarded the 2019 Scholastic Research Award, and in July of 2023 he concluded a two-year term on the Tennessee Tech Board of Trustees. With the Bryan Symphony Orchestra at Tennessee Tech he developed a curricular live orchestral concert that is now annually attended by over 2,000 fourth graders from 5 counties in the Upper Cumberland. Over 25,000 4th graders and their teachers have visited the campus of Tennessee Tech for these concerts.





Dan holds a masters degree in cello performance from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where he completed his coursework towards the Doctor of Music in both conducting and cello performance before moving to Atlanta to become Music Director of Atlanta Ballet. At the prestigious Jacobs School of Music (the largest School of Music in the United States) he served as Associate Instructor of Conducting and conductor of the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. Concurrently, Allcott was appointed the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Conducting Fellow, a position he held for three years. In 1998, Mr. Allcott was named the first Herbert von Karajan Fellow of the American Austrian Foundation at the Salzburg Festival and was subsequently accepted to conduct in the Nicolai Malko and Grzegorz Fitelberg competitions in Europe.