Kedrick Armstrong is the new Music Director of the Oakland Symphony, named in 2024 as the 9th Music Director in the orchestra’s almost 100-year history. His inaugural season with the Oakland Symphony was met with audience and critical praise for his programming, dynamic stage presence and palpable energy for music-making and audience connectivity. Of their opening night performance, the San Francisco Chronicle remarked that “Armstrong and the orchestra were in glorious accord. Everything from richly blended strings to the spry and musing woodwind choir, the burnished French horns, blazing brasses and a pair of thundering timpanists combined in a singular performance. The orchestra sounded as fine as it ever has.”
The Oakland Symphony has embarked on a groundbreaking project that will elevate the voices of seven remarkable Black American Composers. The goal of “Blacknificent 7” is to cement the legacies of these works in the American classical canon, and to reach new, diverse audiences through innovative storytelling and digital distribution. The 2024-2025 season saw the first two premieres - Shawn Okpebholo's Two Black Churches with baritone Will Liverman and Carlos Simon’s Here I Stand: Paul Robeson, a co-commission with the Kennedy Center. The 2025-2026 season opens with Dave Ragland's Harmony of the Unheard for actor/narrator and orchestra. Jasmine Barnes's Tupac (Shakur): A Requiem for soloists, chorus, and orchestra will close the season. Other 2025-2026 highlights include Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Verdi Requiem and works by Stravinsky, Mahler and Rimsky-Korsakov.
Kedrick’s 2025-2026 guest conducting appearances include the world premiere new production of Scott Joplin’s 1910 opera, Treemonisha, with the Washington National Opera. This powerful work reimagines the incomplete piece with direction by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, musical arrangement and orchestrations by composer Damien Sneed, and dialogue and lyrics by playwright Kyle Bass. In addition, Mr. Armstrong makes his orchestral conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra and Springfield Symphony, as well as a return to Chicago Sinfonietta.
Kedrick's recent highlights include a debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a CSO MusicNow performance of works by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Allison Loggins-Hull. He also debuted with Lyric Opera of Chicago to premiere Will Liverman and K Rico’s new opera The Factotum, and appeared at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis as one of the festival’s assistant/cover conductors (Tosca, Susannah). He served as assistant conductor for Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride at Chicago Opera Theater and music director for Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Wheaton College’s Opera Mainstage. Kedrick has served on the music staff at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera and at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. He has recently concluded his tenure as the Creative Partner and Principal Conductor of the Knox-Galesburg Symphony in Illinois.
Named by The Washington Post as one of “22 for ’22: Composers and performers to watch,” Kedrick uses his voice and platform as a Black conductor to advocate for classical music’s performance, publication, and preservation of minority voices. This advocacy has led to various speaking engagements and a research fellowship with the American Music Research Center (University of Colorado Boulder) studying Black female composers within the Helen Walker-Hill archives.
Kedrick spent several seasons as the music mentor/supervisor for “EmpowerYouth! Igniting Creativity through the Arts,” a unique collaboration with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Chicago Urban League. He also enjoyed working with young people through local outreach programs such as Ravinia Festival’s REACH*TEACH*PLAY, Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, and Chicago Sinfonietta’s Audience Matters.
Kedrick is an alumnus of Chicago Sinfonietta’s Project Inclusion Freeman Conducting Fellow program, where he served as Assistant Conductor during the 2018-2019 season. He holds a B.M. in History and Literature from Wheaton College and an M.M. in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Colorado Boulder. He graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Armstrong has studied with and assisted/covered conductors Mei-Ann Chen, Gary Lewis, John Nelson, Cliff Colnot, and Lidiya Yankovskaya, among others.
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