Michael Holmes's career has encompassed a wide spectrum of musical pursuits, including the fields of historical performance, symphonic conducting, composing/arranging, and scholarly research. He serves as music director of the Orchestra of the 17th Century in Washington D.C., artistic director of the Washington Cornett and Sackbutt Ensemble (one of the USA's premiere period brass ensembles), and director of the University of Maryland Collegium Musicum. He has also performed on an array of period instruments with ensembles such as Stylus Luxurians, the Washington Bach Consort, Opera Lafayette, and Piffaro. Michael has performed extensively as a conductor in Europe, leading symphonic, opera, and historical performances in Poland, Czech Republic, Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria. His conducting teachers have included Jorma Panula, Neeme Järvi, Otakar Trhlík, František Vajnar, and Georg Tintner. As a Fulbright Scholar, he undertook extensive research on Nordic music in Finland, specializing in the music of Sibelius, and sang on two tours with the premiere Finnish male voice choir Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat (including one at New York's Lincoln Center), and was present during their recording of the Sibelius complete works for male voice choir on the Finlandia label. In December 2007, Holmes traveled to China to sing with a small group of professional American singers to take part in the premiere of Ye Xiaogang's "Song of Peace," an oratorio written for the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing holocaust in 1937. Currently, he serves as the music director at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, MD.

Contact: musicdirector@uucss.org