Tamara Dworetz

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Tamara Dworetz is a dynamic and electric musical force on the podium. She has conducted the Paris Mozart Orchestra, Boston Pops, Dallas Opera Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Amarillo Symphony, and Mankato Symphony. She has served as an assistant conductor for the Orchestre de Paris (Klaus Mäkelä), Gürzenich Orchestre Cologne (François-Xavier Roth), BBC Concert Orchestra (Bramwell Tovey) and Atlanta Symphony (Nathalie Stutzmann) and won 2nd prize in the Boston Pops' Leonard Bernstein Conducting Competition. Her 2023-24 season will include debuts with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (HerStory Family Concerts) and the Arkansas Symphony in featuring pianist Conrad Tao. She is thrilled to be the newly-appointed Music Director of the Georgia Philharmonic.

Tamara was recently selected as 1 of 14 candidates from a worldwide pool in the 2022 La Maestra Conducting Competition and Academy for Women Conductors in Paris, France. She was the only US-born conductor selected for the competition, and earned a spot as one of 6 semi-finalists. 'Maestra', a documentary directed by Maggie Contreras, features 5 conductors from the competition, including Tamara, and was premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and highlighted on CBS National News as well as international film festivals.

An advocate for new music and inventive programming, Tamara enjoys designing collaborative performances to further engage audiences and increase accessibility. Recently, she invited Rudras, an award-winning Indian Classical Dance Team, to perform a story-through-dance to Indian-American composer Reena Esmail's TaReKiTa. Tamara also paired Reena Esmail’s Teen Murti with Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodály’s Dances of Galánta; these pieces have similar forms and blend Hindustani and Hungarian musical traditions, respectively, with Western-Classical elements. She also programmed Atlanta-born composer Carlos Simon’s The Block (specifically one in NYC) with Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story which might take place on that same block. Tamara enjoys making connections through creative programming which help highlight musical elements and further engage audiences. She has been a recipient of the Bruno Walter Conducting Fellowship at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which she twice attended, in both in 2019 and 2021, working and learning from an array of composers and musicians, and studying with Cristian Măcelaru, conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestre in Cologne.

A devoted music educator, Tamara’s musical beginnings took place in the Atlanta public school system and she is passionate about leading K-12 and pre-professional musicians in enriching musical experiences. Tamara is the newly-appointed Georgia State University Director of Orchestral Studies & Charles Thomas Wurm Distinguished Professor in Instrumental Music. She has served guest conducting residencies at University of Texas Butler School of Music , Boston University School of Music, SUNY Fredonia School of Music, and the Longy Conservatory Orchestra at Bard College and was Music Director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY) Orchestra and Concert Choir. She has led all-state orchestras in Texas, Seattle, Colorado & Georgia and guest conducted the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, served as Interim Conductor of the Austin Youth Orchestra, and worked with the Emory and Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. She also served as assistant conductor for the National Youth Orchestra (NYO2) in their first international tour. From 2013-16, Tamara was the Director of Orchestras at Lakeside High School where she increased enrollment by 50%.

Tamara and her husband, Stephen, live in Brookhaven, Georgia with their puppy and two guinea pigs. When she's not conducting, she enjoys going to the dog park, drinking her favorite craft & Belgian beers, and watching dark comedies.