Music Director
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Music Director Alfred Savia enjoys an internationally respected career as conductor, orchestra builder and teacher. Under his leadership the Evansville Philharmonic has expanded its activities to include a comprehensive Youth Orchestra program, the incorporation of the Philharmonic Chorus, Children’s Choirs and the Eykamp String Quartet. He initiated many new concert programs including Gospel Night, Family/Casual Classics Series, Outdoor Concerts in and around Evansville, annual Messiah and Nutcracker performances, Music Alive (residency with composer David Ott), a Side-By-Side program with the professional and Youth Orchestras, and Chamber Orchestra concerts in Vincennes and New Harmony. The inclusion of fully-staged opera in many of the past seasons has become one of the highlights of the cultural scene in Evansville. The 2005 production of Brundibar (a collaboration of EPO and CYPRESS) garnered unparalleled local, regional and national attention, through a featured story on CNN, as a community-wide effort to use this children’s opera in teaching the lessons of the Holocaust.  Similarly, the Philharmonic’s performance of Shostakovich’s 13^th Symphony, a musical setting of poetry about the massacres at Babi Yar in Ukraine, brought Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko (through the sponsorship of the University of Evansville) here for that week, putting the EPO in the national orchestral spotlight.  Savia’s innovative programming skills and his ability to connect with audiences everywhere have been documented in profiles in Musical America and Symphony Magazine.  Maestro Savia was the recipient of the 2004 Mayor’s Arts Award.

Savia, who was Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1990-1996, is a frequent guest conductor throughout North America and around the globe. His American appearances have included performances with the St. Louis, Detroit, Phoenix, Savannah, Alabama, Southwest Florida (Ft. Myers), Columbus, Illinois, Memphis, Winston-Salem, Roanoke, Battle Creek, San Antonio, Spokane, Duluth-Superior and Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Louisville Orchestra and Dayton, Rhode Island and Fresno Philharmonic Orchestras. Internationally he has conducted the Korea Philharmonic Orchestra, State of Mexico (Toluca) Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina in Florence, Radio & Television Serbia (Belgrade) Symphony Orchestra, Denmark’s Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Ankara, Turkey, the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra in Germany and the Symphony Orchestra of Xalapa, Mexico. Recent summer festival appearances have included Chicago’s Grant Park Symphony, Summer Music at Harkness Festival in New London, Connecticut, Lucius Woods Performing Arts Center in Wisconsin, and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Symphony On the Prairie. He has recorded Russell Peck’s The Thrill of the Orchestra with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

A native of Livingston, New Jersey, Savia graduated from Butler University’s Jordan College of Fine Arts. He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, and privately with Otto Werner Mueller. Conducting studies at the American Symphony Orchestra League’s Institute of Orchestral Studies and the Tanglewood Music Center led to his first professional appointment as Assistant Conductor of The Omaha Symphony. Subsequently, he served as Resident Conductor of the Florida Philharmonic and New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Florida Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Orlando Opera. He also played an integral role in the emergence of the Orlando Philharmonic, serving as its Artistic Director and Principal Conductor from 1995 to 2000.  Last season he returned for concerts with the Indianapolis Symphony during the regular season as well as summer concerts at Symphony on the Prairie and throughout the state.  He also conducted the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra (New Orleans) in one of their first post-Katrina concerts in March of 2006, and returned for concerts there again in the 2006-07 season.  In May of 2006 he conducted the Orchestra Sinfonica della Provincia di Bari (Italy) and was immediately invited back to conduct in 2007-2008.

Alfred Savia and his wife, Kathryn, an EPO violinist, have two daughters, Laura and Juliana.