Alison Norris

Conductor | February 21, 2027: Painted Soundscapes

Dedicated to sharing the sense of awe latent within music and committed to engaging listeners with its contemporary relevance, Brooklyn-based conductor Alison Norris recently completed their tenure as the Conducting Fellow for the Canton Symphony - a position they won in 2024 and that had since been renewed and expanded for the 2025/26 season.

Internationally, Norris has appeared as a finalist in the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition with the London Symphony Orchestra, been invited as a guest conductor with the China International Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing, and conducted the Orchestre Métropolitain as a finalist with Yannick Nézet-Séguin in Domaine Forget de Charlevoix.

In the spring of 2026, Norris guest conducted with the NYC Orchestra Project and with Renegade Opera; both organizations extended additional invitations for the following season. Recent festival engagements include Tanglewood’s Conducting Seminar, where they were invited to premiere a new work by Maya Miro Johnson, and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music as a Conducting Associate.

Always seeking to foster musical fascination alongside human compassion, in 2024 Norris organized a multidisciplinary benefit concert project entitled “Divinity and the Cosmos: A Genderqueer Exploration of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie”. They collaborated with five other transgender artists to create original films examining each movement of Messiaen’s preeminent work through a genderqueer lens: helping audiences navigate unfamiliar dissonances with the similarly enigmatic nature of trans joy.

Norris’s conducting mentors include George Manahan, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jim Ross, Tito Muñoz,Cristian Măcelaru, and Oriol Sans. Alison holds a Professional Studies diploma from the Manhattan School of Music, a Masters of Music from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Bachelor of Arts in Music from Valparaiso University.