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 first two seasons with the Oakland Symphony have been met with audience and critical praise for his programming, dynamic stage presence and palpable energy for music-making and audience connectivity. The San Francisco Chronicle remarked that “Music Director Kedrick Armstrong is a flat-out star, and he constructed a season that outshone the orchestra’s neighbors in vision and excitement.”
In the past two seasons, the Oakland Symphony has embarked on a groundbreaking project elevating 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 opened 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 closed the season. Other 2025-2026 highlights included Beethoven Symphony No. 9, Verdi Requiem and works by Stravinsky, Mahler and Rimsky- Korsakov.
Kedrick’s 2026-2027 guest conducting appearances include debuts with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony for Handel’s Messiah, Richmond Symphony, Fargo Moorhead Symphony and with American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in a program to include five new works by American composers including Daniel Bernard Roumain, Oswald Huynh, Alexander Timofeev, Mali Irene and Alex Weiser.
Highlights of the 2025-2026 season included the world premiere of a new production of Scott Joplin’s 1910 opera, Treemonisha, with the Washington National Opera and directed by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, musical arrangement and orchestrations by composer Damien Sneed and dialogue and lyrics by playwright Kyle Bass. Bachtrack noted that “Conductor Kendrick Armstrong skillfully led the cast across a wide variety of styles, from music drawing on the classical operatic tradition to ragtime, folk tunes, church music and even barbershop quartet.” In addition, he made his orchestral conducting debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Grant Park Music Festival, Springfield Symphony, as well as a return to Chicago Sinfonietta.
Other recent highlights include a debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a CSO MusicNow performance of works by Daniel Bernard Roumain and Allison Loggins-Hull, and with Lyric Opera of Chicago to premiere Will Liverman and K Rico’s new opera The Factotum; he also 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, and has studied with and assisted/covered conductors Mei-Ann Chen, Gary Lewis, John Nelson, Cliff Colnot, and Lidiya Yankovskaya, among others.
AT THE REQUEST OF THE ARTIST, PLEASE DO NOT ALTER THIS BIOGRAPHY WITHOUT PRIOR APPROVAL
JUNE 2026 - PLEASE DESTROY ALL PREVIOUSLY DATED MATERIALS.