Executive and Artistic Directors
Executive Directors
Artistic Directors
Richard Aldag, Executive Director
Richard Aldag holds a Ph.D. in Music from the City University of New York. Aldag has served as Executive Director of the Napa Valley Symphony; Executive Director of Lincoln Theater Napa Valley; Executive Director of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, Executive Director of Los Lupeños de San José and Director of the Silicon Valley Youth Conservatory at San José State University. From 2000-2006, Aldag served as a Senior Development Manager for Nancy E. Quinn Associates, a San Francisco-based fundraising and arts management consulting firm.
With more than three decades of experience as arts administrator and arts management consultant, Aldag has raised over $10 million for organizations and personal projects, has managed organizations with budgets over $5 million, and has developed and implemented strategic business plans for arts companies of varying sizes.
As a composer, Aldag’s style can be loosely described as Neo-Expressionism, combining lyricism with rhythmic energy in a post-tonal context that is complex, yet accessible at the same time. Influences include the music of Roger Sessions, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Ralph Shapey. He has received commissions from such diverse entities the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Queens Symphony’s “Sounds from the Left Bank,” Trio Versailles, Earplay, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, cellist Zuill Bailey, Chamber Music San Francisco (for Calefax), and Sierra Ensemble. Aldag has served as Composer-in-Residence for the Sitka Summer Music Festival (2014) and the El Paso Pro Music Chamber Music Festival (2015). His recent CD on Albany Records, “Broadway Boogie-Woogie,” has received universal critical acclaim.
Aldag has served on the faculties of San Francisco State University, San José State University School of Music and Dance, Pacific Union College, the Aaron Copland School of Music of Queens College, Fordham University, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. He served as a special lecturer in music composition and contemporary American music at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1991 and 1992.
Eric Dudley, Artistic Director and Conductor
Born in Toronto and raised in Connecticut, Eric Dudley leads a multi-faceted career as a conductor, composer, vocalist and pianist deeply engaged in the performance and creation of contemporary music. Since its founding in 2009, Eric has been a member of the genre-defying vocal octet Roomful of Teeth, touring worldwide and recording a wide array of newly commissioned works with the Grammy Award-winning ensemble. He moved to the Bay Area in 2016 to oversee the orchestra program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, becoming the next Artistic Director for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in 2017. Eric also serves as one of the principal conductors for the Bendigo Festival of Exploratory Music in Australia, and recently led Roomful of Teeth and Ensemble L’Instant Donné in a production with Peter Sellars at the Paris Festival d’Automne.
While living in New York City, Eric conducted and performed with organizations as diverse as Ekmeles and TENET vocal ensembles, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Talea Ensemble, American Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal and the New York Philharmonic. He was an assistant conductor for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Paavo Järvi and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra under Rossen Milanov for several seasons, and some of his recent guest engagements include the Ojai Festival in California, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in New York and Finland, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in Australia, and the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
A passionate educator, Eric was on the faculty of Mannes College of Music at the The New School in New York, where he directed the Mannes Prep Philharmonic and The New School Chorus, as well as leading the orchestra in concert and teaching the graduate conducting students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for three years. He has recently been appointed to the full-time faculty of the Conservatory of Music at The University of the Pacific, where he teaches voice and composition, coaches the student-run new music ensemble 28/78, and conducts Pacific Opera Theatre productions.
As a pianist and chamber musician, he has performed with members of Novus New York and the Cincinnati and Princeton symphony orchestras. His own music has been premiered and recorded by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, Quey Percussion Duo, and by Roomful of Teeth.
Eric holds a bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music, and master’s and doctorate degrees in orchestral conducting from Yale, where he was the recipient of the Dean’s Prize. He lives in Concord, California with his wife Melanie and their son Ethan.
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