Michael Slon

Sing with Us! Artistic Associate

Active as a conductor of choral, orchestral, and operatic repertoire, Michael Slon is Director of Choral Music and Professor at the University of Virginia, where he leads the University Singers, UVA Chamber Singers and also guest conducts the Charlottesville Symphony. He also serves as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of Virginia, and a conductor and chorusmaster with Charlottesville Opera. Having led the University Singers and Charlottesville Symphony in a gala performance for UVA’s 2017 Bicentennial Launch Celebration (which included Copland’s Appalachian Spring with the Martha Graham Dance Company), he and the Singers presented the regional premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at UVA in 2018. His UVA ensembles have also toured Europe, Canada, and the United States, received more than half a million views on social media platforms, and have performed with Bobby McFerrin and Meredith Monk, for composer Philip Glass and the creators of Les Misérables, and held virtual master classes with Alice Parker, Jake Runestad, and Eric Whitacre. Committed to broad programming perspectives, his repertoire has ranged from Palestrina and Bach masses, Verdi’s Requiem and Mahler’s Symphony #4, Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George and Johnson’s Considering Matthew Shepard, to programs featuring African-American composers, Latin-American works, a program of contemporary women composers, and choral music from film and the Broadway stage. His ensembles have commissioned new work from composers including Stephen Paulus, Forrest Pierce, Adolphus Hailstork, Eric Whitacre, and Judith Shatin, and most recently gave the North American premiere of the Ešenvalds St. Luke’s Passion with the composer in residence.

Since 2011, he has also served as Music Director of the Oratorio Society of Virginia. In that time, he has created a series of new artistic partnerships with the chorus, including a 2014 semi-staged production of Bernstein’s Candide with Charlottesville Opera; a 2022 collaboration with the University Singers on Rachmaninoff’s Vespers; performances with the Charlottesville Ballet, regional orchestras and youth choruses; an Adolphus Hailstork-Rita Dove commission for the group’s 50th anniversary (later featured on regional PBS), and a Community Sing-In to benefit local charities. He has also participated regionally as an artist with the Heritage (now Virginia) Theatre Festival, Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, Staunton Music Festival and Wintergreen Music Festival, and returned post–pandemic to Charlottesville Opera to conduct The Sound of Music and a new FestivAll – Arts for All performance at the Ting Pavilion. As a musician committed to the education of young musicians, he also remains active as a guest conductor for honors choirs and orchestras, and was previously named a member of UVAs Mead Honored Faculty, recognizing outstanding faculty mentors.  

Prior to UVA, he served as visiting conducting faculty at the Oberlin Conservatory, and assistant conductor of the Cornell University choruses and Cincinnati’s May Festival Chorus, where he prepared and co-prepared choruses for concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Also active as a composer, pianist, and writer, his first book – Songs from the Hill – has been cited in a variety of other publications, and his work on Leonard Bernstein has appeared in the Choral Journal, won the American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) Julius Herford Prize, and appeared in Bernstein in Context (2024) from Cambridge University Press. As a composer, he has had work presented by the Vocalis Chamber Choir in concert at NYC’s Merkin Hall, and at the 2018 ACDA Eastern Convention. He holds degrees from Cornell University (where he was named a member of Phi Beta Kappa), and the Indiana University School of Music. For more info visit: https://music.virginia.edu/people/profile/mslon