Bio: Richard Hynson, KMS Music Director

RICHARD HYNSON has contributed to Southeastern Wisconsin as conductor, composer, and teacher for more than thirty years.  He has served as Music Director for the Bel Canto Chorus of Milwaukee since 1988.  From 2006 to 2014, Hynson served as Music Director of the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra.  Hynson has served as Music Director for the Kettle Moraine Symphony since 2017.

Also in demand as a guest conductor, Hynson’s past engagements include performances with the Milwaukee Symphony, the Skylight Opera Theatre, and the Racine, Sheboygan, and Waukesha Symphony Orchestras. 

Hynson has toured and conducted throughout Europe, South America, and Canada.  Hynson and members of Bel Canto International and the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra performed at the internationally acclaimed Spoleto Music Festival in Italy at the invitation of the Festival’s founder, Gian Carlo Menotti.  Hynson and the Bel Canto Choral Artists performed with Luciano Pavarotti at the United Center in Chicago.  On June 4, 2000, Hynson made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut, performing Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis Pacem.  Hynson won the prestigious American Prize for Conducting in 2012.

In addition to his work as conductor and educator, Hynson is a composer.  He has written a substantial body of choral, vocal, and instrumental works, many of which have been published.  The U.S. Air Force Singing Sergeants have frequently performed Hynson’s In the Midst of Life, composed in response to the events of Sept. 11.