Randal Swiggum, Music Director of the Elgin Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Now in his ninth season with the EYSO, Randy Swiggum has enjoyed a diverse teaching career that has spanned first grade general music, high school choir, college orchestra, music theory and conducting. As composer, conductor, teacher, and advocate for young people in the arts, he has established a reputation for musical excellence and a commitment to music education through performance. A frequent guest conductor of orchestral and choral festivals, he most recently conducted the first ever Pennsylvania ACDA/PMEA All-State Junior High Choir, as well as the Singapore American Schools Music Festival, the MENC All-Northwest Honor Choir in Portland, and American Mennonite Schools Orchestra Festival, the Northern Arizona Honors Orchestra, and both the Wisconsin Middle Level Honors Choir and Orchestra.

A passionate advocate for a richer learning experience in the performing ensemble, he serves as Chair of the Wisconsin CMP (Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance) Project, now in its 29th year. A frequent presenter at MENC, ASTA, and ACDA conferences, he has most recently addressed the Pennsylvania MENC on "The Art of Rehearsing," as well as the Maryland MENC, the ACDA North Central Division in Des Moines, the Texas Orchestra Directors Association, and national conventions of the MENC in Phoenix and Kansas City.

Swiggum has conducted successful performance tours to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and throughout the U.S. His choirs performed throughout Italy under the auspices of UNESCO, in Brazil as guests of the city of Rio de Janeiro and Intercultura Brasil, and with the Icelandic National Symphony in Reykjavik under the direction of Lukas Foss. In 1998, he conducted the University of Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra in Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Budapest, and Vienna. He is well-known to Wisconsin theatre audiences as a conductor of opera and musical theatre and has music directed over thirty stage works including the 1991 premiere of the Theatre X opera, Liberace. He created the music for celebrated director Eric Simonsen's new production of Moby Dick for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, named by TIME magazine as one of the 10 Best Theatrical Productions of 2002.

As a writer, Swiggum has served music critic for the Milwaukee Journal, as author of the book Strategies for Teaching, published by MENC (1998), and as a co-author of Shaping Sound Musicians (GIA, 2003). He also serves on the American Symphony Orchestra League Board of Directors - Youth Orchestra Division.

Swiggum was Artistic Director of the Madison Children's Choir from 1996-2000, and currently conducts the Madison Boychoir's top ensembles, Britten and Holst. He has taught at Whitefish Bay High School (Milwaukee), and at the University of Wisconsin and Lawrence University. His degrees are in music education (B.M.) and orchestral conducting (M.M.) and he is currently a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2005, he became the Education Conductor for the Elgin Symphony Orchestra, planning and conducting its youth concerts.

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