Portal:Oregon/Selected biography/47

Huw Edwards is a Welsh conductor and the current music director of Portland, Oregon's Columbia Symphony Orchestra and Olympia, Washington's Olympia Symphony Orchestra. Edwards' conducting career began at age seventeen when he became music director of the Maidstone Opera Company in England. He later attended the University of Surrey, where he conducted the college orchestra along with an ensemble that he formed on his own. At age twenty-three, he won a conducting competition which sent him to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He then held a lecturer position at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he was also a doctoral candidate. Edwards was conductor and music director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic from 1995 to 2002 followed by the Seattle Youth Symphony from 2002 to 2005. He has been music director of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra since 2000 and the Olympia Symphony Orchestra since 2002.