Paul Phillips

Paul Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Music and Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Brown University, Music Director and Conductor of the Brown University Orchestra, Senior Lecturer in Music at Brown, Music Director and Conductor of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and Music Advisor to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. He has conducted over sixty orchestras worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Rochester Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica de Salta, and Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, led opera and ballet performances with the Boston Academy of Music, Commonwealth Opera, Opera Providence, Connecticut Concert Ballet, and Festival Ballet Providence, and recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra, and Brown University Orchestra. Also an accomplished composer, pianist, author, and educator, his compositions include an opera, a ballet, incidental music for several plays, and numerous orchestral and vocal works that have earned him many awards, including a 2016 Fellowship in Music Composition from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) and a 2016 RISCA Project Grant for Individual Artists to support his newest composition, Brass Knuckles (for large orchestra), which he composed in August 2016.  He has published articles and essays on a variety of musical subjects and is the author of A Clockwork Counterpoint, a groundbreaking study of Anthony Burgess's music and its intrinsic relationship to his literature. Phillips's many honors include the 2015 Harriet W. Sheridan Award for Distinguished Contribution to Teaching and Learning at Brown University and 11 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.

Phillips holds two degrees in music from Columbia: CC '78 (BA in music, cum laude) and GSAS '80 (MA in composition). He has been a member of the music faculty at Brown since 1989.