Oliver Prezant

conductor

Conductor and arts educator Oliver Prezant has presented lectures and education programs for the Santa Fe Opera, Opera Southwest, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Albuquerque, Road Scholar, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and programs on the relationship of music and visual art for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Albuquerque Museum. He is the founder and the executive and artistic director of Opus OP Arts and Education Projects, which provides programs on music, visual art, and poetry for listeners, musicians, teachers, and students. He was the music director and conductor of the award-winning Santa Fe Community Orchestra for twenty years, where he worked with community musicians and choristers, professional soloists, public school music students, and New Mexico composers to present a wide variety of innovative performances, youth concerts, audience education programs, and community collaborations with museums, arts organizations, and creative artists, as well as performances of large choral works at venues including the main stage of The Santa Fe Opera and the Cathedral Basilica in Santa Fe. His compositions include The Butterfly / La Mariposa for storyteller and orchestra, songs and poems in a variety of genres, and educational pieces for student band and orchestra. He was one of the founding teaching artists in the ArtWorks Program of the Partners in Education Foundation for the Santa Fe Public Schools, which provided arts education workshops for students and teachers in the areas of music, poetry, visual art, theater, and dance. As the Artistic Advisor to the program, he trained teaching artists and classroom teachers and coordinated with area poets, museums, and performing arts organizations. His unique presentations have helped thousands of music lovers of all ages deepen their appreciation and understanding of music and the arts.