John Thomas Dodson was appointed Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Cleveland Women's Orchestra in 2019. He is also Music Director of the Lexington Bach Festival and Artistic Director of Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo, a music festival in the Colonial City of the capital of the Dominican Republic, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Dodson's recent performances include the debut of the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra on the Maltz Performing Arts Center’s Silver Hall Concert Series, and upcoming performances with include a return to Cleveland’s Severance Hall with renowned pianist Antonio Pampa-Baldi.
John Thomas Dodson has conducted in major venues including New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, Budapest's Hungarian State Opera House, Athens's Megaron Concert Hall, Rochester's Eastman Theatre and Cleveland's Severance Hall. His career has taken him to Europe and Asia as well as engagements in the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. In addition to his current positions he previously served as Music Director for Birmingham Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra, Adrian Symphony Orchestra, Bryan Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra New York, Coronado Music Festival and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Tucson. In the field of dance, Dodson served as Principal Conductor of Ballet Theatre of Toledo. His work in opera includes leading productions of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, with the Cleveland Opera and Suor Angelica in a collaboration between Yale Opera and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Dodson served for three seasons as cover conductor for the St. Louis Symphony and assistant conductor with Arizona Opera.
As a guest conductor Dodson has led concerts with the Athens State Orchestra, Budapest Philharmonic, National Philharmonic of Russia, National Symphony Orchestra of Bashkortostan, National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, Irkutzk Symphony Orchestra, Omsk State Academic Symphony Orchestra, Bialystok Philharmonic, Rochester Philharmonic, New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra UANL in Monterrey, Mexico. His performances have been featured on a nationally syndicated program on Public Radio International and broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio stations as well as radio and television stations in Europe, Russia and North America. He has collaborated with extraordinary soloists including legendary pianists Philippe Entremont and Cecile Licad, violinists Jinjoo Cho, Caroline Goulding and Kurt Nikkanen, soprano Leah Crocetto, violists Paul Silverthorne and David Aaron Carpenter and cellists Yannis Tsitselikis and Jan Vogler.
Dodson has a longstanding commitment to contemporary music. He performed under the batons of leading composers Aaron Copland, Karel Husa and Vincent Persichetti and was later invited to conduct the latter composer’s music at Lincoln Center’s “Persichetti Remembered” Retrospective. Dodson has collaborated with many living composers, leading over twenty-five world-premieres in the United States, Russia and Europe. Notable projects include conducting the world premiere of Camil van Hulse’s Kino Saga Symphony, Theodore Antoniou’s Cello Concerto with renowned cellist Yannis Tsitselikis in Athens, Greece, and recording the orchestral works of Robert Jager with the Omsk Philharmonic, flautist Stephanie Winker and the St. Louis Children’s Choir for the Naxos label. Other contemporary music projects include premieres of music by Grammy Award-winning composer Kenneth Fuchs, collaborations with Bright Sheng and Michael Daugherty and co-commissioning a new work by Christopher Theofinidis which he later conducted with New Haven Symphony Orchestra. Dodson’s own orchestrations and arrangements for orchestra are published by Subito Music Distribution.
In addition to his work as a musician, Dodson teaches Mindfulness for Performers. He has taken Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction courses at UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center and UMass Memorial Center for Mindfulness. Dodson was selected to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities program studying Buddhism in the Himalayas at the College of the Holy Cross with faculty from Holy Cross and Harvard University. After working with Buddhist teachers and attending numerous silent meditation retreats, he embarked on an intensive program of Vipassana meditation, eventually finding his way to Zen. Dodson now leads mindfulness retreats, seminars, and workshops internationally in colleges, schools, conservatories, wellness centers and international conferences, including sessions at Washington College, Oberlin College-Conservatory, the Dominican Republic's National Conservatory of Music and University of Pennsylvania Kutztown Summer Music Festival. He returns to Oberlin College Conservatory this spring for a four-week program on mindfulness for performers.
Dodson has given presentations at the national conferences of Conductor's Guild and the League of American Orchestras. He has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University and was recently invited to be a featured speaker this coming August in Reykjavik, Iceland at The Creativity Conference an annual meeting of creative artists from around the world.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, John Thomas Dodson holds the degree of Master of Music in Instrumental Conducting from the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he studied under renowned conducting pedagogue Frederik Prausnitz. Dodson studied composition with Robert Jager at Tennessee Technological University, where he later was selected for their Outstanding Young Alumnis Award. He continued his conducting training with Paul Vermel at the Aspen Music School, and was mentored by Ed Meyer, father of the bassist and Grammy Award-winning composer Edgar Meyer. Dodson is a recipient of the Lenawee Arts Award from the Croswell Opera House and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from Siena Heights University.
