Dr. Matthew Mailman
Conductor, Oklahoma Youth Winds
Dr. Matthew Mailman is Professor of Conducting in the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, a position he has held since 1995. Dr. Mailman has had extensive and diverse experience conducting operas, musicals, orchestras, choirs, bands, and chamber music. He serves as a Music Director for the Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company and Conductor of OCU’s award-winning Wind Philharmonic. At OCU, Dr. Mailman has conducted forty-seven operas and musicals and has led the Wind Philharmonic in fourteen world premieres, on five tours, at two OK Mozart Festivals, and at nine convention performances.
He teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting and coordinates OCU’s Masters in Conducting program. Recent opera performances include Cendrillon, Die Zauberflöte, La Bohème, Dialogues des Carmélites, and Nico Muhly’s opera Dark Sisters. Recent musical performances include Sweeney Todd, On The Town, Hairspray, and Into the Woods. For the Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater 2019-2020 season, he will music direct the musicals The Music Man and Spamalot.
A champion of new music, he has worked with many significant composers, including Michael Daugherty, Nico Muhly, Edward Knight, Judy Bozone, Brian Balmages, Michael Markowski, Karel Husa, Jack Stamp, Frank Ticheli, Martin Mailman, Ron Nelson, Ray Luke, Kristopher Maloy, Christopher Lowry, and Cindy McTee.
As Conductor/Artist in Residence at Opera in the Ozarks, he conducted Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah in the summer of 2007 and Mozart’s Cosí fan Tutte in 2008. He was one of 10 conducting fellows selected for the 2014 Baltimore Chamber Orchestra Summer Conducting Seminar with Markand Thakar and Henry Fogel and is a Clinician for the College Orchestra Directors Association. He is a frequent convention clinician and and recently presented a clinic, “Conductors….What the Heck Are We Doing?!” at several conventions, including 2016 Texas Music Educators Association and 2016 Oklahoma Bandmasters Association. For three summers, Dr. Mailman co-hosted with Dr. Michael Raiber the Oklahoma City University Wind Band Conducting Symposium.
Dr. Mailman has been an associate conductor with the Oklahoma Youth Orchestras, Inc. since 1997, and is the Music Director of the Oklahoma Youth Winds, which was founded by Dr. Mailman in 2004 and which was selected to perform for the first time at the 2013 Oklahoma Music Educators Association Annual In-service and again in 2015 and 2017. With OYW, he founded the Annual Student Conductor Competition, the National Composition Competition, and the NAfME Teaching Internship. His work has been published in The Instrumentalist and Teaching Music, and he is a research associate and writer for 8 volumes in the series Teaching Music Through Performance in Band. Southern Music published his arrangement of Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2, K. 314 for Harmonie. For five years, Dr. Mailman hosted a weekly radio program, “No Strings Attached”, on 90.1 FM KCSC Edmond-Oklahoma City/ 91.9 KBCW McAlester during which time he wrote and produced 180 new shows.
Dr. Mailman is a native of Denton, Texas. He earned his bachelor of music and master of music degrees from Northwestern University where he studied with John P. Paynter. He earned his doctorate in conducting at the University of North Texas where he studied with Eugene Corporon and Anshel Brusilow. His father, the renowned composer Dr. Martin Mailman was Composer-in-Residence at the University of North Texas for thirty-four years. His mother, Mary Nan Mailman, a student of Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School of Music, was a concert pianist and teacher at the University of North Texas.