Matt Bertuzzi is the Conductor of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra’s Springfield Youth Sinfonia and Music Director at the Springfield Honors Academy, both in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has been hailed as a “lively and animated teacher” by OperaPulse and opera critic Mike Cascia has described his technique as “a striking Italianate style of conducting.”
As a Trustee of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra he developed and implemented the Symphony’s innovative Real-Time Concert Notes program which allows audience members, using a smartphone app, to receive live program notes about the music they are hearing while its being played in concert. After the success of this program, Matt gave a TEDx Talk entitled, THE ROCKET IN YOUR POCKET: How a high school band led to the development of a smartphone app allowing for new means of audience engagement in the 21st Century.
As the Assistant Conductor of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Greenfield, Massachusetts the symphony won numerous ASCAP awards for adventurous programming. A Massachusetts native, Matt has also been Assistant Conductor of The Professional Advantage and the Italian Operatic Experience, opera festivals in the Marche region of Italy. He was the musical director of the UMass Chamber Orchestra as well as the Assistant Conductor of the UMass University Orchestra, 5 College Opera Project, and Opera Workshop. In his final concert at UMass, he produced and conducted the University’s first fully staged opera to be performed with full orchestra, Donizetti’s Rita. For this performance, Matt was a semi-finalist for The American Prize in Opera Conducting, the only collegiate conductor to achieve such an honor.
Matt has traveled to Brazil as a guest conductor with the Orquestra Criança Cidadã, Recife, Brazil’s premiere youth orchestra academy. He has also conducted at the International Institute for Conductors Advanced Conducting Academy in Bacau, Romania, while performing with the Mihail Jora Filharmonica, and at the Omaha Symphony’s Conductors Symposium. Matt has also served as a Conducting Fellow at The Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, Washington where he conducted the Yakima Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Daniel Corrall’s Animatic.
Matt studied conducting with Lanfranco Marcelletti Jr. and cello with Astrid Schween. He holds a master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting and a bachelor’s degree Music Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He currently resides in Longmeadow, Massachusetts with his wife, Allison, and their sons, Noam and Kaleb.
