Cynthia Katsarelis
Director, Ritornello Chamber Orchestra
Assistant Professor of the Practice, Conducting
Representative Publications, Performances, and Creative Work
- Magnificat: Lifting up the lowly. Shostakovich, Rodrigo, and JS Bach’s Magnificat with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, SMND’s Concordia Vocal Ensemble and faculty and students. (2025)
- Liberation, Nkeiru Okoye’s Songs of Harriet Tubman and Louise Farrenc’s Third Symphony with South Bend Symphony Orchestra. Pre-concert conversation with community leaders. Co-sponsored by Gender Studies and Department of Music. (2025)
- Cosmic Wonder, collaboration with Notre Dame colleagues and the South Bend Symphony Orchestra in music by Jessie Montgomery, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Franz Joseph Haydn. (2024)
- George Friedrich Handel: Messiah, Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra - George Friedrich Handel: Messiah, with Boulder Chamber Chorale. Soloists: Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, Nicole Asel, Steven Soph, Ashraf Sewailam. (2023)
- Transfigured, Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Boulder, CO, Anne Guzzo: The Eclipse and the Bear, Wolfgang A. Mozart: Sinfonia concertante (Harumi Rhodes, violin and Richard O’Neill, viola), Arnold Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (2023)
- Through the Looking Glass, Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Boulder, CO, Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte, Joseph Haydn: Cello Concerto in C (Meta Weiss, cello), Wolfgang A. Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201(2023)
- Apotheosis of the Dance, Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Boulder, CO, Ben Morris: The Hill of Three Wishes (Commissioned work, world premiere), Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement (Jennifer Hayghe, piano), Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 (2022)
- Conference Paper: Social Relevance and the Symphony Orchestra: Approaches to producing works that address social concerns, to be presented at the conference of the International Conductors Guild, London, England, January 2025.
- Conference Paper: Shostakovich Symphony No. 14, conference of the International Conductors Guild, Valencia, Spain, January 2023.
- Presenter: ICG Women’s Caucus: Representation of Women conductors in the field, Cincinnati, OH, January 2022.
Education
D.M.A., University of Colorado, Boulder
M.M. & B.M., The Johns Hopkins University, Peabody Conservatory of Music
Biography
Dr. Cynthia Katsarelis joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in Fall 2023 and is an assistant professor of the practice in conducting in the Program in Sacred Music. Katsarelis brings extensive experience as a conductor, educator, and advocate for new and diverse music. Following her apprenticeship with the Cincinnati Symphony, Pops, and May Festival, she has conducted over 50 orchestras and collaborated extensively with professional and community choirs, dancers, and soloists, also working in opera and mixed media projects. Critical reviews have praised her work as “a model of precision and spirit.”
Forging new partnerships in the community and across campus, Dr. Katsarelis has presented concerts with a social conscience in collaboration with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, local community leaders, and guest soloists. With an interdisciplinary team consisting of a biologist, a composer, and a filmmaker, Katsarelis was awarded a Strategic Framework Grant in 2025 to produce, perform, and record Symphonic Wings, a cinematic symphonic tone poem, a work using art to address the scientific concern of species extinction.
In Colorado, Katsarelis has recently completed her seventeen-year tenure as Music Director and Conductor of Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, a professional ensemble committed to traditional, contemporary, and diverse composers. With Pro Musica, Katsarelis commissioned 15 works, and presented numerous world and regional premieres. Her professional activities there included numerous guest-conducting appearances with the Colorado Music Festival as well as conducting the Young Artist Seminar Orchestra at Rocky Ridge Music Center and the Loveland Opera Theatre. In North Carolina, Ms. Katsarelis served as Associate Conductor of the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestra, and led the Greensboro Symphony Pops and the Greensboro Ballet’s production of the Nutcracker.
Believing in the transformative power of music, Dr. Katsarelis has taught in Haiti since 2004 at L’École de Musique Sainte Trinité in Port-au-Prince and its summer music camps in Cange and near Mirebalais. There, she’s conducted L’Orchestre Philharmonique Sainte Trinité, taught violin pedagogy, and worked with the children’s choir, Les Petits Chanteurs. Her commitment to social justice through music includes producing benefit concerts and food drives.
Dr. Katsarelis serves on the board of the International Conductors Guild and has held positions as chair of the ICG Women's Caucus and a moderator on various panels. Her dissertation thesis projects included work on Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14 and an examination of the symphonies of Louise Farrenc.