July 12, 2005—Bridget-Michaele Reischl, music director of the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra since 2001, has joined the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College as visiting associate professor of conducting and music director of the Oberlin Orchestras. She will retain her directorship of the Green Bay Symphony.

"Bridget Reischl is a phenomenal musician and teacher and a very gifted conductor," says Dean of the Conservatory David H. Stull in announcing her appointment. "We are enormously pleased to be bringing her to Oberlin."

Reischl's appointment became effective July 1, 2005, but this will not be her first experience at Oberlin. From the fall of 1990 until the spring of 1992 she served as Oberlin's interim orchestra conductor.

"I am honored and delighted to have this opportunity -- Oberlin impressed me so much back then," says Reischl. "It is very exciting to be returning. I can't wait to get started."

Reischl's first concert will be with the Oberlin Orchestra on Sunday, October 2, at 8 p.m. in Finney Chapel. She will also conduct the spring opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor, in March 2006.  

Since becoming the first American to win Italy's Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition in 1995, Reischl has been an active guest conductor internationally and throughout the United States.

From 1992 to 2004, Reischl was music director of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra and associate professor of conducting at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin.      

Reischl is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music. As a student of Robert Spano '83, she continued her studies as a conducting fellow at both the Aspen and the Tanglewood music festivals, where she worked with Seiji Ozawa, David Zinman '58, and Murray Sidlin. She has recorded on the Velut Luna, CRI, and Sea Breeze Record Company labels.

The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated within the intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and pronounced a "national treasure" by the Washington Post, Oberlin's alumni have gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music world. Many of them have attained stature as solo performers, composers, and conductors, among them Jennifer Koh, Steven Isserlis, Denyce Graves, Franco Farina, Lisa Saffer, George Walker, Christopher Rouse, David Zinman, and Robert Spano. All of the members of the contemporary music ensembles eighth blackbird and the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) are Oberlin graduates, and members of the Miró, Pacifica, Juilliard, and Fry Street quartets, among others, include Oberlin alumni, who also can be found in major orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.