Dr. Alan Yamamoto leads the orchestra program at UNC Charlotte. He is also the conductor of the Queens University Orchestra. From 2011 to 2022 Dr. Yamamoto was the conductor of the Central Piedmont Opera Theater Orchestra and a full-time faculty member at the college for nine years. His current community collaborative project, Orchestra Mosaic, pulls together students from partner university orchestras and high school string ensembles using university faculty and area professionals as coaches and players to provide an exceptional learning environment for students.
Dr. Yamamoto first came to Charlotte in 2003 where he was the Resident Conductor of the Charlotte Symphony for six seasons, and was prior to that time the Resident Conductor of the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder for nine seasons.
An advocate of living composer works, Dr. Yamamoto created the Modern Music Festival in Boulder to showcase contemporary art and world music, works for film and dance, including a diverse list of guest artist residencies with Foday Musa Suso, Chico Freeman, Joan Tower, Chen Yi, William Albright, and John Corigliano. The festival was commended by the Colorado State Legislature for its innovative and cultural contribution to the Arts. He has presented the Charlotte premieres of such works as John Adams’s Harmonielehre, Michael Daugherty’s Metropolis Symphony, Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral, and Chen Yi’s Duo Ye and Ge Xu: Antiphony.
In his ongoing collaborative ventures, Dr. Yamamoto has conducted Stravinsky’s Agon, Hindemith’s Four Temperaments, and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker for productions with the Charlotte Ballet, combined student and faculty from Central Piedmont Dance Theater and the UNC Charlotte Percussion Ensemble in Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and presented an historical performance of Britten’s War Requiem for the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War I with Charlotte metro area university music departments.
Dr. Yamamoto has created a lecture and performance series centered on the chamber ensemble arrangement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony created by Arnold Schoenberg’s post WWI composers’ enclave, the Society for Private Musical Performances, which he has presented in Boulder, New Orleans, and Houston. He holds degrees from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and the University of California at Berkeley.