The Seattle Symphony has announced the appointments of LEE MILLS as associate conductor and LINA GONZALEZ-GRANADOS as conducting fellow, beginning September 2019.
A winner of the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award in 2014 and 2017, Lee Mills is currently the resident conductor of the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra. He participated in the League of American Orchestras’ Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview in April 2018. As the Seattle Symphony’s associate conductor, Mills will conduct select concerts during the 2019-20 season as well as holiday programs and family and community concerts. Mills will also serve as cover conductor for Music Director Designate Thomas Dausgaard and guest conductors. Mills’s conducting engagements include the National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Mills received his graduate performance diploma and artist diploma in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Institute. He was a conducting fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen during the summers of 2012 and 2013. A native of Montana, Mills graduated cum laude from Whitman College.
Lina Gonzalez-Granados joins the Seattle Symphony as conducting fellow following similar appointments with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia Festival, the Nashville Symphony, and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas. At the Seattle Symphony, she will lead education and community engagement concerts and will serve as cover conductor on four Masterworks and Baroque & Wine series concerts. Her 2018-19 season includes a guest conducting debut with the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Colombia and engagements with Tulsa Opera and Santa Fe Pro Musica. In 2017 Gonzalez-Granados was appointed the Taki Concordia Conducting Fellow, a position created by Marin Alsop to foster the entrepreneurship and talent of female conductors. Gonzalez-Granados is a proponent of the music of Latin American composers, work which earned her recognition by El Mundo in 2016. In 2014 Gonzalez-Granados founded Unitas Ensemble, a Boston-based chamber orchestra specializing in Latin American music. The group has given multiple world, North American, and American premieres, and has been recorded.
Posted January 22, 2019