Brian DeMaris currently serves as Music Director of Mill City Summer Opera and Artist-Faculty at the Aspen Music Festival. He has worked with New York City Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, Syracuse Opera, Tri-Cities Opera, American Opera Projects, American Lyric Theater, Ash Lawn Opera Festival, Music Saint Croix and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. He has appeared at the United Nations, the Aspen Music Festival, Boston’s Jordan Hall, New York’s Studio 54, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Alice Tully Hall, and in recitals, competitions, and master classes throughout the United States and abroad. He is the 2nd place winner of the 2013 American Prize in Opera and Musical Theater Conducting. Having served as Director of Opera and Musical Theatre at Ithaca College since 2008, in 2015 he joins the faculty of Arizona State University as Artistic Director of the Lyric Opera Theatre program.

DeMaris has also taught at Lawrence University, New England Conservatory School of Continuing Education, George Mason University’s International Opera Alliance, the International Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, and “Meet the Artist” at Lincoln Center. He has served on panels with Opera America and the National Opera Association, and presented master classes with the National Association of Teachers of Singing, New York State Music Teachers Association and New York State School Music Association. His students have performed on Broadway, film and television, and at opera companies and festivals throughout the world.

A frequent performer and advocate of contemporary music, he conducted the Middle Eastern premiere of Mark Adamo’s Little Women with the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the world premiere of Stefan Weisman’s Darkling with American Opera Projects at the Classical Stage Company with additional performances in Gniezno, Poland, at Frei Universität in Berlin, Germany, the New York City Opera VOX Festival and the United Nations. He also leads the world premiere recording of Darkling, released on Albany Records in 2011. DeMaris was also involved with the professional American premiere of Richard Rodney Bennett’ s Mines of Sulphur at Glimmerglass Opera, which was broadcast on NPR and BBC, released on the Chandos label, and nominated for a Grammy Award, as well as the world premieres of Peter Ash’s The Golden Ticket and John Corigliano’s revised version of The Ghosts of Versailles at Opera Theater of Saint Louis, for which he provided assistance with the preparation of the published piano-vocal score through G. Schirmer. He has also served as Resident Conductor of American Lyric Theater in New York, through which he has done several workshops of new works including The Golden Ticket at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Adam and Eve at Symphony Space and Why Is Eartha Kitt Trying To Kill Me at Le Poisson Rouge. Mr. DeMaris is also a composer himself: his art songs have been performed in recitals throughout the United States.