Conductor
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Jamie has conducted a wide variety of ensembles from symphony and studio orchestras to contemporary chamber groups and children’s choirs.
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He was the Children’s Chorusmaster for the Santa Fe Opera for many years, and the founding conductor of the Desert Chorale Children’s Chorus and the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble.
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He was also the founding conductor of the Cross Timbers Youth Orchestra in Texas and has conducted many side-by-side performances with students and professionals. From 2007 to 2019 Jamie conducted the annual Music Memory concert and competition, which involved the participation of thousands of elementary students each year, and featured performances by members of both the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He has also served as the Music Director for dozens of musical theater productions.
Conductor
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Jamie has conducted a wide variety of ensembles from symphony and studio orchestras to contemporary chamber groups and children’s choirs.
​
He was the Children’s Chorusmaster for the Santa Fe Opera for many years, and the founding conductor of the Desert Chorale Children’s Chorus and the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble.
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He was also the founding conductor of the Cross Timbers Youth Orchestra in Texas and has conducted many side-by-side performances with students and professionals. From 2007 to 2019 Jamie conducted the annual Music Memory concert and competition, which involved the participation of thousands of elementary students each year, and featured performances by members of both the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He has also served as the Music Director for dozens of musical theater productions.
Biography
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Jamie Allen has over 30 years of experience as a composer, conductor, performer, and music educator. His 2012 performance with Jamie Bernstein in a Dallas Symphony Family Concert was hailed by the Dallas media as “marvelous” and “impressive.”
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Allen earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Chicago, and a master's degree in composition from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been named "Composer of the Year" by the New Mexico Music Teachers Association and was hailed as "the most inventive young composer in the state" by The Santa Fe Reporter. Allen has won awards from both ASCAP and the American Music Center for his work, as well as commissions from numerous ensembles and arts organizations.
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Allen has served on the music faculties of the College of Santa Fe and Collin College. He has been a frequent presenter, educational consultant, and conductor for many arts organizations, including the Santa Fe Opera, the Desert Chorale, Santa Fe New Music, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, the Dallas Opera, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, the New Mexico Arts Commission, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He was the founding director of the Desert Chorale Children’s Chorus and the Santa Fe New Music Youth Ensemble in New Mexico, and the Cross Timbers Youth Orchestra in North Texas.
Under his guidance as Education Director for over 14 years, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s award-winning educational programs reached over 50,000 children and adults each year with Youth & Family Concerts, an innovative string instruction program for under-represented students, the El Sistema inspired Young Musicians program (serving every aspiring musician in South Dallas), frequent in-school & community programs, pre-concert lectures, open rehearsals, web sites, master classes and more. Allen has conducted many side-by-side concerts (combining professionals with students), including regular appearances on the podium for the Music Memory concert and competition. In 2014, Allen traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico with musicians from the Dallas Symphony to organize a city-wide residency and conduct a culminating concert with over 100 musicians on stage, in the historic Teatro Macedonia Alcalá. In 2016, Jamie was the stage director and assistant music director for the DSO’s production of Benjamin Britten’s community opera Noye’s Fludde, presented at the Cathedral Shrine of Guadalupe. In 2017, Jamie worked with Dallas community leaders to develop and execute a successful poetry-writing program, culminating in an inspiring performance that combined original poetry and theater with music by both professional and advanced student musicians, called Dallas Dreams Big.
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Allen currently splits his time between composition and working on the Artistic staff of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra & Music School. Recent commissions and performances include works for the renowned trombonist Angel Subero, the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Sinfonia, the Rye Country Day School Festival Chorus, the American Recorder Society, the Boston Recorder Orchestra, and others.