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The American conductor, Paul Mauffray, began his music studies at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (Diploma in Instrumental Classical Music; piano studies with Moses Hogan); and Louisiana State University (Bachelor of Fine Arts in Music and German; Conducting studies with Timothy Muffitt). He studied conducting at Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany with Sergiu Celibidache (1990-1991); at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music with Arthur Fagen and David Effron (2009-2011); was a conducting fellow at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen (2002); and has conducted in master-classes under the guidance of Larry Rachleff, David Zinman, James Conlon, David Robertson, and Jorma Panula. He was awarded First Prize in the 1996 Freedman Conducting Competition, and was semi-finalist in: Bonn, Cadaques, and in the Prague Spring Conducting Competition where he earned Honorary Mention. He was the only American conductor admitted to the orchestra rounds of the 2001 Besançon conducting competition. He is laureat of the 2007 Bartók International Opera Conducting Competition, The American Prize for Conductors, and 1996 Freedman Conducting Competition. He has also been one of a select number of conductors invited to participate in master-classes with Michael Tilson Thomas in Miami (2001), with Esa-Pekka Salonen in Singapore (2008), and with Franz Welser-Möst in Indiana (2010).
Paul Mauffray has been engaged in the Czech Republic at the Prague National Theater and National Theater in Brno, and he has worked as assistant conductor to Sir Charles Mackerras with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on recordings of Leoš Janáček's Kata Kabanova and Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka. He has also worked as assistant conductor on operas at the Salzburg Festival with Sir John Eliot Gardiner on Jenůfa, Theater an der Wien, and was a guest conductor at the Romanian National Opera, Bucharest, Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landestheater, Slovak National Theater (Bratislava, Slovakia), Opéra Louisiane, Mobile Opera Alabama, and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia (2016). He has also conducted at the Bard Music Festival in New York as assistant to Leon Botstein.
Paul Mauffray’s passion for the operas of Leoš Janáček led him to study in the Czech Republic, where he graduated in Musicology Studies with an emphasis in autograph manuscripts of Leos Janacek from the Masaryk University in Brno (2005-2007), and worked as assistant to conductors Bohumil Gregor, Jiří Bělohlávek, and Sir Charles Mackerras. He has worked as assistant conductor on over eight productions of Janáček operas including, Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Case, and the American premiere of Osud (Fate). In 2008, he was engaged as Studienleiter/Assistant Conductor and Czech Language Coach on Káťa Kabanová with Kirill Petrenko and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra at Theater an der Wien.
Paul Mauffray has been engaged as Studienleiter /Assistant Conductor at the Janáček Opera/National Theater in Brno, where he conducted Don Carlos. His successful performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps (taken over on 24 hours notice) with the Brno Philharmonic led to an immediate return engagement in W.A. Mozart’s Requiem. He has conducted in 18 countries on 4 continents and developed his symphonic repertoire with regular engagements predominantly with Czech orchestras since 1994. He has also conducted W.A. Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Schleswig-Holstein Landestheater, and subscription concerts with the Augsburg Philharmonic, Slovak Philharmonic, and Orchestre National de Lyon.
While engaged as Associate Instructor / Assistant Conductor at Indiana University Opera, Paul Mauffray also conducted Pictures at an Exhibition in return engagements with the Janáček Philharmonic in Ostrava (2014), Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel at Opéra Louisiane. He has performed regularly in Austria and in the Czech and Slovak Republics with violin-soloist Tomas Vinklat (then member of the Wiener Philharmoniker), and a recent return engagement at the Hainburger Haydngesellschaft in 2017 with Filip Waldmann was his fifth collaboration with another soloist from the Wiener Philharmoniker.
Paul Mauffray has been frequently named finalist for The American Prize for Professional Orchestral Conductors winning 2nd prize in 2021 and 2018, 3rd prize in 2019, 2016 & 2015, and awarded Honorary Mention in 2014. As 2nd Prize Winner in the 2007 Bartók International Opera Conducting Competition, he has conducted performances of Béla Bartók's Bluebeard’s Castle and La traviata, as well as scenes from La bohème, Georges Bizet's Carmen, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Rigoletto, Camille Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila, & Tosca in Romania. He then appeared as a guest conductor at the Bucharest National Opera in 2010, and he was invited by Valery Gergiev in 2011 to coach singers and conduct orchestra rehearsals of The Makropulos Case at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg. In 2016 he conducted there performances of Rusalka.
As an advocate for the revival of lost operas, Paul Mauffray conducted in 2018 the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in the New Orleans Opera premiere of George Whitefield Chadwick's Burlesque Opera of Tabasco which he reconstructed from the original 1894 manuscript. He has recently conducted return engagements in Hradec Králové, Zlin, and Hainburg in programs featuring music of Janáček, Smetana, and Bruckner. During recent seasons he conducted The Devil & Daniel Webster at Mobile Opera and made his Russian debut conducting performances of Dvořák's Rusalka at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. In March 2016, he conducted a studio recording of the 1964 opera The Scarlet Letter by Fredric Kroll in a return engagement with the Brno Philharmonic. Other recent conducting appearances of his have been in: Bear Valley, Bratislava, Brno, Chattanooga, Hradec Králové, Hukvaldy, Ostrava (2014), Pardubice, Zlin, and multiple concerts with the with the Schloss Schönbrunn Orchester in Vienna (2013), New Orleans (Gabriel Fauré's Requiem), Baton Rouge (George Frideric Handel's Messiah), and Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen in Hradec Králové.
In 2018, Paul Mauffray was inducted as a national honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity and recognized as a Signature Sinfonian. He made his New York conducting debut at Merkin Hall in 2019 with New York Concert Artists & Associates. That year he also conducted in Argentina for the first time in a program of Berlioz and Janacek with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Salta and was invited to conduct the Prague Chamber Orchestra and the Moravian Philharmonic Olomouc on tour in Austria. During the Covid pandemic of 2020 Mauffray conducted the Czech premiere of A Fiddler's Tale by Wynton Marsalis. |
