Timm Rolek

2004-2005 marks Timm Rolek’s tenth and final season as Music Director of the 95-year-old Grand Forks Symphony (ND) and his seventh season as Artistic Director of the Sacramento Opera (CA).  Since March 2003 he has also been Artistic Director and Conductor of the prestigious Lake Tahoe Music Festival. Under his tenure, the Grand Forks Symphony has secured awards from ‘Meet The Composer’ and ‘Chamber Music America.’  This season in Sacramento, he leads productions of Don Giovanni, La Cenerentola, and Madama Butterfly.  Formerly he was Music Director of the Heartland Symphony (1993-1998) and a member of the conducting staff at the Metropolitan Opera.  He is a busy guest conductor on both the concert and operatic stages, having led performances with Nevada Opera, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Skylight Opera Theatre, Chautauqua Opera, Opera Delaware, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls, Minneapolis Civic, and Glacier Symphonies, as well as the Ravinia Festival.   

            Maestro Rolek’s repertoire ranges from Johann Strauss to Puccini, Sondheim to Musgrave. He has recorded  Jerre Tanner’s The Kona Coffee Cantata with the Prague Chamber Orchestra, and Joseph Fennimore’s Eventide (both on the Albany/Troy label). He conducted the American premiere of Ernst Krenek’s Das Geheime Koenigreich and has participated in the Pierre Boulez / IRCAM composers and conductors workshop at Carnegie Hall.  Twin Cities Public Television KTCA-2 has featured Maestro Rolek on their two-time Emmy Award-winning program Arts on 2, and, in conjunction with Northern Lights Public Radio, he produced a nine-part radio-program called Music In Our Century. He also served on a Lila Wallace / Reader’s Digest grant panel and Singer Workshop panel for Opera America.

            Maestro Rolek studied composition at the University of Minnesota and continued his studies with Herbert Blomstedt, Sir Neville Marriner, Klaus Tennstedt, and James Levine.