Our Conductor

William Schrickel, Music Director and Conductor

William Schrickel has been the Music Director of the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra since 2000. Recently named an Assistant Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra for the 2005-2006 season, he is also in his fourth season as Music Director of the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra.

Schrickel’s programs with the MSO survey a huge range of orchestral repertoire, from music of J.S. Bach through works composed by some of today's finest composers, including Dominick Argento, Christopher Brubeck, Osvaldo Golijov and Christopher Rouse. He has led performances of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, the Kenwood Symphony, The Chamber Music Society of Minnesota and The Musical Offering.

Schrickel began to study conducting with Thomas Trimborn while still in high school, and he was twenty years old when he won an audition to become a member of the double bass section of the Minnesota Orchestra. A bass student of Joseph Guastafeste, he attended Northwestern University for three years before joining the Minnesota Orchestra in 1976. He became the orchestra’s assistant principal bassist in 1995, and he is currently the acting associate principal of the section. He has twice appeared as soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, performing music of Giovanni Bottesini and John Tartaglia.

An active chamber musician, Schrickel has been a member of the Hill House Chamber Players in St. Paul and was a founding member of the Minneapolis Artists Ensemble (MAE), a chamber music group that performed in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center and commissioned seventeen new works over seven seasons. He has participated in the Minnesota Orchestra’s Adopt-A-School music education program since 1993, performing for and speaking to elementary school students to prepare them to attend their first live orchestra concert.