Timothy Weiss

  • Professor of Conducting
  • Director, Contemporary Music Ensemble and Oberlin Sinfonietta
  • Director, Division of Conducting and Ensembles

Areas of Study

Education

  • First Prize Diploma with Distinction, Royal Music Conservatory (Brussels, Belgium), 1986
  • BM, Northwestern University, 1990
  • MM, University of Michigan, 1997

Biography

Conductor Timothy Weiss has earned acclaim for his performances and bold programming throughout the United States and abroad. His repertoire in contemporary music is vast and fearless, including masterworks, very recent compositions, and an impressive number of recordings, premieres and commissions.

For three decades, Weiss has directed the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, bringing the group to a level of artistry and virtuosity in performance that rivals the finest new music groups. He earned the Adventurous Programming Award from the League of American Orchestras for his work with Oberlin ensembles.

He also serves as a faculty member and is the director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble at the Aspen Music Festival and School. Additionally, he is a co-director and founder of the Zohn-Collective, a flexible contemporary music collective which seeks to produce and perform artist-driven projects generated by its members. He remains active as a guest conductor in the US and abroad and continues to be a regular guest of the Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta in Norway, an ensemble for which he served as Artistic Director for six years.

Weiss holds degrees from the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, Belgium; Northwestern University; and the University of Michigan.

He has received the Adventurous Programming Award from the League of American Orchestras.

Fall 2024

Oberlin Orchestra/Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble — APST 709
Oberlin Sinfonietta/Oberlin Chamber Orchestra — APST 724
Contemporary Chamber Music — APST 805

Spring 2025

Contemporary Chamber Music — APST 805

Notes

Tim Weiss Receives Rave Reviews for New Album of Missy Mazzoli Works

March 27, 2023

Tim Weiss’ newest recording on the BIS label, Missy Mazolli: Dark With Excessive Bright, includes several instrumental pieces by the formerly opera-focused Mazolli, with featured performances by violin soloist Peter Herresthal. Weiss leads Norway’s Arctic Philharmonic in four works on the recording. For six seasons, Weiss was artistic director of the Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta and he continues to be a regular guest. The album has garnered a number of rave reviews.

The Strad (free e-newsletter subscription needed) writes that “musicians from the Arctic Philharmonic provide rich, detailed support in Dark with Excessive Bright,” while the “ensemble truly comes into its own in three recent works – Sinfonia (from Orbiting Spheres), These Worlds in Us and Orpheus Undone – which receive vividly etched, expertly paced accounts.”

The Arts Fuse credits Weiss’ direction in These Worlds in Us: “Unfolding essentially like a set of variations, its pulsing, turbulent textures and captivating sense of musical space are strongly etched by Tim Weiss and the Arctic Philharmonic.”

News

Semester Ends with a Packed Performance Calendar

December 8, 2023

Oberlin Conservatory’s student and faculty performers have been filling most concert venues throughout the campus over the last week. During these final five bustling days before students head into reading period and then exams, this explosion of activity feels something akin to the thrilling finale of a fireworks display on New Year's Eve. So, join in—even from a distance. All of these concerts are free and open to the public, and all but one of them can be streamed live at concert time at oberlin.edu/livestream .

Oberlin Music Label Releases “Wish: Music of Valerie Coleman”

May 25, 2023

Flute Professor Alexa Still collaborates with pianist Evan Hines '16 in seven works for flute written by composer Valerie Coleman—some inspired by poems of Maya Angelou and Fred D'Aguiar; album also features the readings of these poems by Oberlin's President Carmen Ambar.

Students, Faculty Participate in Detroit's Resonate Symposium

April 14, 2023

Two years in the making, Oberlin Conservatory students and faculty are in midtown Detroit, April 14-15, to participate and perform in the Resonate Chamber Music Symposium , held at The Carr Center —an organization dedicated to showcasing Black arts and artists.

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