Lima, OH (March 21, 2023) – The Lima Symphony Orchestra is pleased to announce that Music Director Andrew Crust has renewed his contract for another three years. Crust was selected as music director in 2020, after an extensive search and with input from the Lima Symphony Board, musicians, audience, and community. His new contract extends through the close of the 2025-2026 season.
“I am delighted to announce this contract renewal, ensuring that Andrew Crust will continue as the LSO’s Music Director for another three years,” said Executive Director Elizabeth Brown-Ellis. “Andrew’s vision and leadership reach across all areas of our orchestra. His commitment to music education, dedication to accessibility, and determination to diversify our programming ensures that the LSO will remain relevant and vibrant throughout our community. Our orchestra has never sounded better, and I know great things are ahead.”
Andrew Crust is the 5th Music Director in the Lima Symphony Orchestra’s history. In his three years as Music Director, Crust has led collaborations with soloists such as Amit Peled, Charles Yang, Awadagin Pratt, Sandeep Das, and Laquita Mitchell. Under his leadership, the orchestra has enjoyed its most diverse programming to date, engaged in new recording projects, commissioned new works, and during the difficult pandemic seasons, the orchestra was able to record a number of classical and educational programs broadcast online and at local drive-in movie theaters.
The Lima Symphony Orchestra is dedicated to preserving musical excellence as a living part of our community. Serving communities throughout West Central Ohio, the Lima Symphony annually presents five subscription concerts, a family concert, Music by Candlelight concerts, and an annual New Year’s Eve Pops concert.
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For more information about the Lima Symphony Orchestra or for tickets, please contact the Lima Symphony at 419-222-5701 or www.limasymphony.com.
Andrew Crust Bio:
American/Canadian conductor ANDREW CRUST has developed a versatile international career as a conductor of orchestral, opera, ballet, film and pops programs. In his third season as Music Director of the Lima Symphony, Crust programs and conducts the Grand Series, Pops and Educational programs and has led collaborations with soloists such as Amit Peled, Charles Yang, Awadagin Pratt, Sandeep Das and Laquita Mitchell. Under his leadership the orchestra has enjoyed its most diverse programming to date, engaged in new recording projects, commissioned new works, and during the difficult pandemic seasons, the orchestra was able to record a number of classical and educational programs broadcast online and at local drive-in movie theaters.
In the current and upcoming seasons Crust will debut with the Arkansas, Elgin, Rockford and Vermont Symphonies as Music Director finalist with soloists such as Tracy Silverman, Geneva Lewis, Shannon Lee, George Li and Wei Luo, and with the San Diego Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Symphony Nova Scotia, Vancouver Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Orchestra Symphonique de Laval, Billings Symphony, Vancouver Island Symphony and Sewannee Summer Music Festival as a guest conductor. Other recent engagements include performances with the Winnipeg Symphony, Memphis Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Bozeman Symphony and l’Orchestre de la Francophonie in Québec.
Crust is a 2020 winner of the Solti Foundation US Career Assistance Award. In 2021 he was awarded “Prémio a la Proyección” at the Llíria City of Music International Conducting Competition. In 2017 he was awarded first prize at the Accademia Chigiana by Daniele Gatti, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to guest conduct the Orchestra di Sanremo in Italy. He was a semi-finalist for the Nestlé/Salzburg Festival’s Young Conductors Award competition, and was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic as a winner of the Ansbacher Fellowship, with full access to all rehearsals and performances of the Salzburg Festival.
Crust is equally at ease in the pit, having conducted ballet with Ballet Memphis and the New Ballet Ensemble, and opera with Opera McGill, College Light Opera Company, Boulder Opera Company, and others. As a Pops conductor, Crust has collaborated with such artists as Rufus Wainwright, Steven Page, Tony DeSare, Michael Bolton, Dee Daniels, Cirque de la Symphonie, and the United States Jazz Ambassadors, and many others. Crust has also established himself as a conductor of films with orchestra.
Crust served as the Associate Conductor of the Vancouver Symphony in Canada from 2019-2022, where he conducted a wide variety of programs with the VSO each season, and made dozens of recordings released on theconcerthall.ca. Crust served as Assistant Conductor of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019 where he conducted around forty concerts each season. Crust also served as Conductor of the Memphis Youth Symphony Program.
Crust was the Assistant Conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) in the summers of 2017 and 2018, assisting Michael Tilson Thomas on an Asian tour, as well as Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop and James Ross at Carnegie Hall and in a side-by-side performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has also served as Cover Conductor of the Kansas City Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Nashville Symphony, Assistant/Cover Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic and Assistant Conductor of Opera McGill.
Abroad, he has led concerts with the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, Hamburger Symphoniker at the Mendelssohn Festival in Germany, the Moravian Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Chile in Santiago.
As an arranger/orchestrator, Crust partnered with Schirmer to make orchestrations of a set of Florence Price’s art songs, premiered in February 2022, and has orchestrated works by Alma Mahler and Prokofiev, as well as many popular and educational selections.
Crust is dedicated to exploring new ways of bringing the classical music experience into the 21st century through innovative programming and marketing, creating community-oriented and socially-sensitive concert experiences, and utilizing social media and unique venues. Crust is a firm believer in meaningful music education, having produced and written a number of original educational programs with orchestras. Crust is also committed to diversity and representation in the concert hall. In February 2022 the Lima Symphony performed a “Black History Month” program featuring three black American composers never before performed by the orchestra, including a spoken word event onstage with black poets. Under Crust’s leadership, programming of BIPOC and female composers has increased by over 35% per season.