Meet Our Music Director
Music Director & Conductor
VICTOR T. ANSTINE
Victor T. Anstine is a conductor, composer and clarinetist, musicologist and managerial musician dedicated to high standards of historical authenticity in performance and practice. Educated as an ensemble instrumentalist at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Preparatory Department with the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony, he led the ensemble as principal clarinetist touring in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, under the direction of Dr. Gary Ciepluch. In addition to wind bands, he was E-flat, A, and Bass clarinetist in the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra under Brett Mitchell for its 25th anniversary season. Victor was also educated as a diverse composer at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Young Composers Program under Dr. Keith Fitch, 2015-2016. He has gone on to compose four operas, eight symphonies, large symphonic works, vocal pieces, and chamber works. Victor is the recipient of the John Philip Sousa Band Award, and additionally recieved a ©National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Emmy® Student Production Award for his film score for Buzzing In The Garage, a film by Nate Laguardia, August, 2017, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. He continued his studies to pursue conducting and composition at Capital University Conservatory of Music, graduating in 2020. During his undergraduate work with Dr. Jeffrey D. Gershman, his conducting study flourished to include operatic masterpieces and many more symphonic and chamber works.
Over the years, Victor has conducted works by Mahler, Wagner, Chevalier Joseph Bologne, Amy Beach, Mascagni, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Strauss II, and Copland. He conducted in the 2021 Luigi Mancinelli Opera Conducting Competition in Orvieto, Italy studying and conducting “Cavalleria Rusticana” by Mascagni. He also conducted in Vienna, Austria in the First Edition of the Vienna School Conducting Competition in July of 2022, studying Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Berg.
Victor is most passionate about bolstering the repertoire position of underrepresented composers to offer more diversity and stylistic options for modern audiences. He is equally devoted to the works of composers like Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Mahler, Verdi, Lully, Bellini, Boieldieu, Handel, Gounod, Guerre, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart. Victor has worked with The Akron Pops Orchestra, The Euclid Symphony Orchestra with his mentor Matthew Salvaggio, and has conducted many private chamber orchestra concerts in Columbus OH.
Mr. Anstine’s affinity to inspire and create in artistic numbers is something that has always remained paramount to him, and he strives to inspire communities through music and drama, as it has inspired him so tremendously to share the richness of music to create beautiful and authentic performances.
