Samantha Burgess

Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2022, Burgess has quickly become an in-demand conductor. In the 2024 – 25 season she began her tenure as Music Director of the Community Women’s Orchestra, where she has given numerous world and US premieres of works by women composers. Beginning in the 2025 – 26 season, Burgess was appointed as the first Music Director of Symphony Tierra, a semi-professional orchestra formed as the ensemble in residence at Napa Valley College. Also for the 2025 – 26 season, she joins the artistic staff of the Peninsula Symphony as their Assistant Conductor, conducting in subscription and education concerts. Burgess continues to work with the Berkeley Symphony as their regular Assistant Conductor, and will be Cover Conductor for Dima Slobodeniouk at the San Francisco Symphony in May 2026.

Burgess’ additional recent engagements include Guest Conducting Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the Napa Valley Chorale, Assistant Conducting for Beethoven’s Ninth with the Oakland Symphony, and a tour of Paris and the Loire Valley with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, where she made her French debut. Previously, she was Assistant Conductor with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra, the Westerville Symphony (OH), the Galesburg Community Chorus (IL), and the Oxford University Philharmonia (UK).

Burgess holds masters’ degrees in Orchestral Conducting and Music Theory from The Ohio State University, where she was Music Director of the Ohio State Community Orchestra and Assistant Conductor for the Ohio State Symphony Orchestra. While at OSU, she was also a graduate teaching assistant in Music Theory and a member of the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory. On the podium, she combines conducting with her background in music cognition research to develop innovative, multimedia performances. Burgess has presented her research at the Society for Music Theory Midwest Conference, Future Directions of Music Cognition, and the Oxford Conducting Institute International Conducting Studies Conference.