photo by Jordan Silverman

Troy Peters is Music Director of the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, Conductor of the Middlebury College Orchestra, and Music Director of the Vermont Youth Orchestra.  His work has been the subject of nationally broadcast profiles on CBS News Sunday Morning and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday.  Vermont Governor James Douglas recognized his contribution to the state’s cultural life by proclaiming April 17, 2005, as “Troy Peters Day” in Vermont.  And he has gained international attention for his orchestral collaborations with rock guitarist and composer Trey Anastasio (formerly of the band Phish), including numerous live performances and two albums on Elektra Records.

Peters has been a frequent and popular guest conductor with many groups, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Vermont Mozart Festival, the Northwest Mahler Festival, the Champlain Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Vermont Opera Theater.  Among the soloists with whom he has collaborated are Midori, Jaime Laredo, Horacio Gutiérrez, Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), and Soovin Kim.  He has been honored with six ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.  Before coming to Vermont in 1995, he was the Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra for four years, a position where he followed in the footsteps of Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Paavo Järvi, and Robert Spano.  Among Peters’ other past conducting positions are posts with the Pacific Chamber Soloists (Tacoma, Washington), Perpetuum Mobile (Philadelphia), and the Upper Valley Music Center Orchestra (Hanover, New Hampshire).  A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Pennsylvania, he has participated in numerous conducting workshops and clinics, where his teachers included Marin Alsop, Raymond Harvey, David Hayes, Jeffrey Kahane, Kenneth Kiesler, David Loebel, Gustav Meier, Joseph Primavera, Larry Rachleff, and Carl St. Clair

Peters is also active as a composer, where his work ranges from orchestral and chamber music to a large body of songs and an opera for hand puppets.  Among his honors are the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and grants from Meet the Composer and the Rockefeller Foundation.  His primary compositional mentors were George Crumb and Ned Rorem.  A versatile instrumentalist, Peters not only plays the viola, but has also performed on tenor banjo and electric guitar with symphony orchestras.  Born in 1969 in Greenock, Scotland, of American parents, he lives in Colchester, Vermont, with his wife and daughter.