The Lucy Moore Ruffin Chair

Michelle Di Russo is Assistant Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony. She has conducted Young People's Concerts and a bilingual educational performance of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, and she will be conducting Statewide Holiday Pops concerts on the Symphony's 2021 tour.

   Michelle Di Russo holds a doctoral degree in orchestral conducting from Arizona State University, where she served as Assistant Conductor for the ASU Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia, and Music Theatre and Opera.
   The recipient of the 2020 American Austrian Foundation/Faber Young Conductors Fellowship, Di Russo has also been a part of Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion 2020/21 season and a conducting fellow at The Dallas Opera Hart Institute for Women Conductors in 2021. She has participated twice in the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, participated in workshops with the United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own,” and was a conducting fellow at the Cortona Sessions for New Music in Italy.
   With Italian roots and raised in Argentina, Di Russo started studies in ballet at the age of three and singing lessons at the age of sixteen. She completed a degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires, and also holds a master’s degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Kentucky.