Applied Artist
M.M., University of Michigan
Office: 815-753-7580
E-mail: tsemanik@hotmail.com
Timothy Semanik is Music Director of the Northern Illinois University Philharmonic. He has a diverse conducting background, having worked extensively in the operatic and choral fields in addition to his work as an orchestral conductor. His past operatic engagements include Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera with Festival Opera, The Mikado with Light Opera Works, Eugene Onegin, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, Cosi fan Tutte, and La Buona Figliola with the Northwestern University Opera Theater, Die Fledermaus, and William Grant Still’s A Bayou Legend with Great Lakes Lyric Opera, Le Nozze di Figaro and Gianni Schicchi with Ann Arbor Opera, Carmen with Comic Opera Guild, Carmen, Albert Herring, and Die Zauberflöte with Opera in the Ozarks, The Turn of the Screw and The Magic Flute with the University of Michigan Opera Theater, and Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi with the California State University, Fullerton, Opera Theater.
Mr. Semanik has served as guest conductor for the Windsor Symphony, the Elmhurst Symphony, the Pacific Chorale, the Pacific Symphony Institute and Youth Orchestra, Ann Arbor Civic Theater, the Livonia Youth Philharmonic, and the orchestras at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. His choral experience includes two years as assistant to John Alexander at the Berkshire Choral Festival and CSU Fullerton, where he conducted both the University Singers and Men’s Chorus. He has worked with many prominent choral conductors including Robert Page, Duain Wolfe, Stephen Cleobury and with Helmut Rilling as a participant at the Oregon Bach Festival.
Mr. Semanik holds a masters in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan and is currently completing his doctoral work in orchestral conducting at Northwestern University. His primary teachers have included Victor Yampolsky, Kenneth Kiesler, Gustav Meier, Michael Morgan, John Alexander, and Edward Cumming. He has participated in masterclasses with Kurt Masur, Robert Spano, Rafael Frübeck du Burgos, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Carl St. Clair, and Christopher Wilkins, David Effron, and Gunther Schuller. In the summer of 2003 he was accepted into the conducting class for the Tanglewood Music Center.