NATHAN ASPINALL
C O N D U C TO R S
Assistant Conductor
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athan Aspinall begins his role as Assistant Conductor of the Nashville Symphony with the 2019/20 season. Previously, he was Assistant Conductor of Jacksonville Symphony. On a tour of South Florida with pianist Bezhod Abduraimov, he led performances of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Kevin Wilt of the Palm Beach Daily News said of the performance, “In recent years the Kravis Center has heard performances by the Chicago Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra and more. This one was just as polished as any of those.” During the 2018/ 19 season, Aspinall led Jacksonville Symphony in two masterworks subscription programs and a tour with organist Cameron Carpenter. He was selected as one of two conducting fellows at the Tanglewood Music
Festival during the summer of 2019. Formerly, Aspinall held the position of Young Conductor with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in Australia, where he assisted Chief Conductor Johannes Fritzsch and visiting guest conductors, and where he conducted concerts for the orchestra’s education series. He studied French horn and conducting at the University of Queensland and upon graduation was awarded the Hugh Brandon Prize. In 2012, he attended the Aspen Music Festival, where he was awarded the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize. Aspinall has guest-conducted several symphony orchestras, as well as the Queensland Conservatorium Chamber Orchestra. Festival appearances and masterclasses have included the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Oregon Bach Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center Conducting Seminar. He studied Orchestral Conducting at New England Conservatory in Boston.
TUCKER BIDDLECOMBE Chorus Director
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ow entering his fourth season as director of the Nashville Symphony Chorus, Dr. Tucker Biddlecombe has raised the bar of excellence for Nashville’s premier choral ensemble through intense musical preparation, diverse programming and community building. Under his direction, the Chorus has expanded to 170 members and recently toured Prague, Czech Republic, performing Orff’s Carmina Burana. He also serves as Associate Professor and Director of Choral Studies at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, where he directs the Vanderbilt Chorale and Symphonic Choir and teaches courses in choral conducting and music education. Biddlecombe’s work with the Nashville Symphony has included chorus preparation for the world-premiere recording of John Harbison’s Requiem (Naxos) and concert performances of choral orchestral masterworks by Stravinsky, Ravel, Haydn, Verdi, Handel and Mahler. He conducts the orchestra and chorus in performance during the annual Voices of Spring concert. In 2018 the Vanderbilt Chorale released its first solo
album, Music in the Listening Place (Navona), with Gramophone UK noting that the Chorale “launch into each track with the earnest passion that only university music students can innocently and genuinely provide.” Biddlecombe made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 conducting Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna. A passionate advocate of music education and a veteran teacher, Biddlecombe is active in school music programs, working with teachers as a side-by side coach with Metro Nashville Public Schools. In 2019 he completed a residency with the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China, where he was honored to work with student and professional choral educators. He is in demand as a conductor and clinician, having served as a clinician to choirs in 25 states. A native of Buffalo, New York, Biddlecombe is a graduate of SUNY Potsdam and Florida State University, where he completed doctoral studies in choral conducting and music education with André Thomas. He resides in Nashville with his wife Mary Biddlecombe, Artistic Director of the Blair Children’s Chorus. INCONCERT
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