The Walleye Magazine

TBSO PROFILE - Paul Haas

Music Director, TBSO

By Kris Ketonen

Born: San Francisco Instrument: Conductor, composer, installation artist Age you started to study music: Violin at age 5 How long you’ve been with TBSO: Since 2017 What’s on personal playlist: Gustav Mahler

Going forward, the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra’s Paul Haas certainly won’t be taking music for granted.

“The hardest part of this past season for me was not being able to make music together as a body,” Haas, the TBSO’s conductor and music director, says of the pandemic’s impact on the orchestra. And while the TBSO had not—at the time of Haas’s email interview with

The Walleye—officially announced a return to in-person performances, Haas says when that happens, it will be a night to remember. “Tears are not out of the question for that first performance,” he says. “It’s going to be a year of drought, followed by a feast. I don’t think I have the words for this one—it will be special.”

Haas’s background includes an undergraduate degree from Yale, and a master’s in conducting from The Juilliard School. He was music director of the New York Youth Symphony and founded Sympho, which offers interactive symphony concerts, prior to joining the TBSO full-time in 2017. He concurrently serves as the music director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, a position he’s held since 2011. “This is an extraordinary orchestra, full of world-class talent and consummate artistry,” Haas says of the TBSO. “I fell in love with the TBSO when I first conducted here, back in March of 2015, and I still feel that to this day.”

“Combine that with one of the strongest board presidents I’ve ever seen, in Linda Penner, and a force of nature in our new executive director Ryleigh Dupuis, and it’s clear the TBSO has a particularly bright future ahead of it.” And while things have been challenging during the pandemic, Haas says the TBSO is planning a full season for 2021–22, although things will look a bit different.

“It’ll have almost all of the same components, with some wonderful new additions,” Haas says. “Everything, of course, depends on the course of the pandemic.”

“We are, at any rate, absolutely ready to go, regardless of which direction it takes.”

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2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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