Michael Ruhling

Michael E. Ruhling has been the conductor and music director of the RIT Orchestra for nine years. He is an associate professor of Fine Arts in the College of Liberal Arts at RIT, teaching a variety of courses in music history and appreciation. He has also taught courses at the Eastman School of Music, Goshen College, Huntington College, and The Catholic University of America. Dr. Ruhling is a member of the conducting and lecture faculty of the Classical Music Festival held each August in Eisenstadt, Austria, is an associate conductor of the Brighton Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared as guest conductor of the UNLV Symphony and Opera, Goshen College Orchestra, University of Missouri Philharmonic, Finger Lakes Symphony, Prince George's Philharmonic, and Rochester's Air de Cour. He also founded and was the first music director of the Maple City Chamber Orchestra in Goshen, Indiana. Dr. Ruhling's book Johann Peter Salomon's Scores of Four Haydn Symphonies: Edition with Commentary was published by the Edwin Mellen Press in 2003, and he has delivered numerous papers and presentations on 18th and 19th century symphonies and performance practices. His essay on the symphonies of Michael Haydn will appear in The Symphonic Repertoire, Vol. 1: The Eighteenth Century Symphony to be published by the Indiana University Press in 2008. Dr. Ruhling is president of the Haydn Society of North America, and secretary-treasurer of the Society for Eighteenth Century Music. He lives in Irondequoit with his wife Julie, an accomplished pianist, and sons Alexander, Peter and Nicholas.