Bruce Hangen

Whether teaching individual young conductors or conducting Boston Conservatory Orchestra, I aim to develop everyone’s own strengths, to make them the absolute best conductor and orchestral player possible, with a view to obtaining a professional position.   

Bruce Hangen joined the Conservatory in 2003. He serves as the Conservatory’s orchestral conductor as well as director of both the orchestral and conducting programs.

Since 1997, Hangen has served as music director of the Vista Philharmonic Orchestra. Associated with Groton Hill Music Center (formerly Indian Hill Music Center) of Littleton, Massachusetts, this is the only professional orchestra serving central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, and complements Groton Hill’s parallel purpose of providing the finest music education through its community music school. Comprised of Greater Boston-based professional musicians, the orchestra performs a series of symphony and other concerts featuring renowned soloists.

Hangen completed his tenure as the principal guest conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra in 2005. He has also held the title of Boston Symphony’s Germeshausen Family Youth Concerts conductor’s chair. Additional past positions include the artistic and general director of the Portland Opera Repertory Theatre (P.O.R.T.) of Portland, Maine in the summer season. Having cofounded the company in July 1995, Hangen was the chief visionary force behind this opera company and its activities. P.O.R.T. presented an annual July festival featuring singing, directing, and producing talent from the world’s greatest opera stages. Hangen also conducted P.O.R.T.’s performances.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music with a major in conducting, Hangen was also a conducting fellow at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood for two summers, where his conducting teachers included Gunther Schuller, Seiji Ozawa, Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Bruno Maderna, and Joseph Silverstein.

Professional Awards and Recognitions

• Browning Award for Career Excellence and Vision, ICAN Foundation (1994)
• Honorary Doctorate, University of New England (1985)

Notable Recent Works

• Conducting Music Today (Berklee Press, 2020)