Newly Appointed Staff Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra William R. Langley began his career as an orchestral conductor at age sixteen. In 2009 he founded the Wolf River Chamber Orchestra and in 2011 the Memphis Repertory Orchestra. Maestro Langley gave over fifty performances with the MRO during his decade-long tenure where the orchestra, in its mission to “Shape the Next Generation of Orchestral Musicians”, served as the Orchestra in Residence at the Buckman Performing Arts Center. In addition to his role with the BSO, Langley also serves as the Resident Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra.

An avid performer, the young Maestro has appeared as guest conductor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Starling Chamber Orchestra, Blueshift Ensemble, Concert:Nova, and All of the Above ensemble. In 2017 he made his opera debut with the CCM Opera Theatre where he conducted a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide as a part of their “Bernstein at a 100” centennial celebration and has since gone on to work with the opera companies of Cincinnati (as the John L. Magro Resident Conductor 2021-2022) workshopping, covering, and performing various operas since 2018 and in Naples (Florida) covering Ramon Tebar and making his debut in Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied (2022). Recent opera appearances included his return to CCM Opera in 2023 leading productions of Gregory Spears’s Fellow Travelers and Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Langley has recorded albums with the Memphis Repertory Orchestra (Dvorak + Tchaikovsky, “Voyagers : Scheherazade + Mitton”) and All of the Above Ensemble (Double Portrait), the latter of which led to his Carnegie Hall conducting debut in the fall of 2018. 2024/25 season highlights include appearances with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra, a return to CCM to lead their production of Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

In demand as a cover conductor, Langley has been a frequent cover with both the Atlanta and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestras covering such conductors as Sir Donald Runnicles, Peter Oundjian, Robert, Spano, Nathalie Stutzmann, Louis Langrée, Juanjo Mena, Ramón Tebar, Nicola Luisotti, Jonathon Heyward, Xian Zhang, and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, to name a few.

Langley holds a Master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting from the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) in Cincinnati where he studied under the tutelage of Maestro Mark Gibson. He was selected by members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the American Austrian Foundation to be awarded one of two esteemed Ansbacher Fellowships for Young Conductors with the opportunity to study in Austria at the 2019 Salzburger Festspiele.

Langley, who “conducts with considerable theatricality, elicited a dramatic performance from the orchestra.” (Jon Sparks/Commercial Appeal), was the subject of a featured article entitled “Young Conductor Realizing Dreams” in the Commercial Appeal as well as the Memphis Flyer’s cover story “20 < 30” as one of “20 young Memphians shaping the city’s future”. WWW.WILLIAMRLANGLEY.COM