| Intro | American conductor |
| Is |
Musician Critic Conductor Music critic Pianist Music director |
| From | United States of America |
| Type | Music |
| Gender | male |
Will Crutchfield is an American conductor, musicologist, and vocal coach. He is the Director of Opera at the Caramoor International Music Festival and a frequent guest conductor at the Polish National Opera. From 1999 through 2005, he served as Music Director of the Opera de Colombia in Bogotá. A specialist in the bel canto repertoire, he prepared the first performing edition of Donizetti’s Élisabeth ou la fille de l’exilé and conducted its world premiere at the Caramoor Festival on July 17, 2003.
In addition to his scholarly work on vocal style, Crutchfield was the youngest music critic in the history of The New York Times, where he was a regular contributor from 1983 to 1989. He has also authored numerous reviews and articles for Opera News, including his “Crutchfield at large” series.
In 2014 Crutchfield was named a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Also in 2014, Crutchfield conducted the world premiere of the critical edition (which he edited for Casa Ricordi) of Aureliano in Palmira in his return to the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, Italy. His performances and the subsequent recording of this work garnered a 2015 International Opera Award for a rediscovered work. In the summer of 2016, he conducted the work in its North American premiere at the Caramoor International Music Festival at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts.
Will Crutchfield was born in 1957 in Raleigh, North Carolina and spent most of his childhood in Newport News, Virginia, where he attended Hilton Elementary School and Warwick High School. He graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in political science. His father, a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Dr. Robert S. Crutchfield of Newport News, Va., is also a professional operatic tenor. As a youngster Will studied piano under Cary McMurran. In 1975, while still in high school, he signed on with the fledgling Virginia Opera, which had been organized the previous year in Norfolk.
Selected bibliography
- Will Crutchfield (1983), ‘Vocal Ornamentation in Verdi: The Phonographic Evidence’, 19th-Century Music, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Summer, 1983), pp. 3–54.
- Will Crutchfield (1989), ‘The Prosodic Appoggiatura in the Music of Mozart and His Contemporaries’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 229–274.
- Will Crutchfield (1988) ‘Fashion, Conviction and Performance Style in an Age of Revivals’ in N. Kenyon (ed.), Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198161530