Meet the Conductors

Meet the Musicians

TOSHIYUKI SHIMADA 

MUSIC DIRECTOR AND CONDUCTOR

​TOSHIYUKI SHIMADA is Music Director and Conductor of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes since 2009. Concurrently, he is Music Director and Conductor of the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra in New London, CT, as well as the New Britain Symphony Orchestra in New Britain, CT. Formerly, he was the Music Director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2019. He is also Music Director Laureate of the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Portland, ME, for which he served as Music Director from 1986 to 2006. Prior to his Portland engagement, he was Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, under Sergiu Comissiona, for six years. Since 1998, he has also served as Principal Conductor of the Vienna Modern Masters record label in Austria.

​Maestro Shimada has been a frequent guest conductor with a number of international orchestras, including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; L’Orchestre National de Lille in France; La Orquesta Filharmónica de Jalisco, Guadalajara,Mexico; the Slovak Philharmonic; the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra in Vilnius; the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; the Prague Chamber Orchestra; NÖ Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna; and the most of the major symphony orchestra of the Rupublic of Turkey, including the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, Borusan Istahbul Philharmonic, Bilkent Symphony, and Izmir State Symphony Orchestra.

In America, he has guest conducted the Knoxville Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the San José Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, and many other US and Canadian orchestras. He has performed in the distinguished concert hall in the world such as the Carnegie Hall, Great Hall of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Boston Symphony Hall, the Vienna, Musikverein the Auditorium Fondazione Cariplo Milano and the Sala São Paulo.

He has collaborated with distinguished artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Andre Watts, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Yefim Bronfman, Idil Biret, Peter Frankl, Janos Starker, Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Nadjia Salerno-Sonnenberg, Cho-Liang Lin, Sir James Galway, Evelyn Glennie, and Barry Tuckwell.  In the Pops field he has performed with Doc Severinsen, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Marvin Hamlisch.

Maestro Shimada has had the good fortune to study with many distinguished conductors of the past and the present, including Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, Herbert Blomstedt, Hans Swarovsky, and Michael Tilson Thomas.  He was a finalist in the 1979 Herbert von Karajan conducting competition in Berlin, and a Fellow Conductor in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute in 1983.

Consistently recognized as an integral and beloved member of every community he joins, Maestro Shimada has received the Portland Fire Department's Merit Award, the Maine Publicity Bureau Cultural Award, and the Italian Heritage Society Cultural Award. He has had a number of state and city holidays named in his honor: Toshiyuki Shimada Day in Houston, TX; Toshiyuki Shimada Week in Portland, Maine; and Toshiyuki Shimada Day in the State of Maine, Toshiyuki Shimada Day in New London, CT, and Toshiyuki Shimada Week in State of Connecticut in May 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Fine Arts by Maine College of Arts.

He records with the Naxos and Albany Records, and the Vienna Modern Masters label, currently has eighteen compact discs on those labels. He also records for Capstone Records, Querstand-VKJK (Germany), and his Music from the Vatican with the Prague Chamber Orchestra and Chorus is available through iTunes, Rhapsody, Apple and Spotify.

Maestro Shimada has a strong commitment to music education, and has been a faculty member of Yale University, Rice University (Houston, TX), the University of Southern Maine, and has served as Artist Faculty at the Houston Institute of Aesthetic Study. He is a favorite guest conductor with the orchestras of Ithaca College, Purchase College, and the University of Connecticut. He has conducted All State Honor and Regional Honor Orchestras for Connecticut, California, New York, Maine and Massachusetts. He was one of the distinguish speakers at the Chopin Symposium 2010, at Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. In 2018, Maestro Shimada conducted a very special concert at the DMZ, South Korea, with the Lindenbaum Festival Orchestra with all the Korean TV stations covering the concert. ​He is a faculty of the Annual New York Conductor’s Workshop, guiding talented young conductors with his wide experience. 

Please visit Maestro Shimada’s web pages: www.toshiyukishimada.com and Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra

MARGARET MATTHEWS

YOUTH ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

Margaret Matthews received her bachelor of music in education and applied music from Ashland University, OH (studying violin with Calvin Y. Rogers), and her master of music in education from Ithaca College (with Debra Moree).  She has performed with numerous regional orchestras in Ohio and New York and is currently a member of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes (OSFL) and co-conductor of the Youth Orchestra.

She teaches elementary orchestra at five schools in Horseheads, teaches violin/viola lessons privately, and is on the board of Corning Civic Music.  She was selected by the Community Foundation of Elmira/Corning as one of 25 Chemung County educators to tour Finland in June 2023. 

MELISSA MOORE

​YOUTH ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

Melissa Moore holds music degrees from Ithaca College and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in music education, flute performance, and chamber music. She currently is the Middle School Band Director at Ernie Davis Academy in the Elmira City School District and the Director of Music at First Presbyterian Church-Elmira, where she conducts the chancel choir as well as large-scale musical cantatas with choir and full orchestra.

With her wealth of knowledge teaching woodwind, brass and percussion students, Ms. Moore is a dedicated music educator building thriving band programs and inspiring advancing students. 

As a member of the Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes since 2011, Ms. Moore performs as third flute and piccolo, most often heard at the top of the orchestra.

In high school, Melissa was principal flute of the Youth Orchestra of the Southern Finger Lakes for three years. As an alum, she holds many dear memories of performing with the Youth Orchestra and attributes a significant part of her musical growth to her participation in the YOSFL. She is pleased to now be conducting the current version of that orchestra, the YPO, and to share her experience and expertise with the younger generation of musicians.  

WILLIAM COWDERY 

CHORUS DIRECTOR

William Cowdery is musical director and organist of the First Congregational Church, Ithaca. Bill served for three years as director of Cornell University's Sage Chapel Choir. He has been a guest conductor of the Elmira Cantata Singers and the Colgate University Chorus. He has taught on the faculties of Cornell University, Ithaca College, Colgate University, and Keuka College as performer, musicologist, and theorist. 

A frequent soloist, accompanist, and lecturer at Bach programs and festivals in the northeast, he has been a three-year fellow of the Bach Aria Festival at Stony Brook. Bill holds a Ph.D. from Cornell for a dissertation on the cantatas of J. S. Bach and has held a Fulbright Fellowship in England. He authored numerous articles in the New Harvard Dictionary of Music and the Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1996). He co-edited The Compleat Mozart with Neal Zaslaw (Norton, 1990).