Tito Muñoz

Praised for his versatility, technical clarity, and keen musical insight, Tito Muñoz is internationally recognized as one of the most gifted conductors on the podium today. After 10 years as the Virginia G. Piper Music Director of The Phoenix Symphony, Tito’s tenure, one of the longest in the organisation’s history, concluded at the end of the 2023-24 season. Praised for the meaningful impact he made during his tenure, Tito now continues his relationship with The Phoenix Symphony as their newly appointed Artistic Partner.

Tito previously served as Music Director of the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy in France. Other prior appointments include Assistant Conductor positions with the Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival.

Tito has appeared with many of the most prominent orchestras in North America, including those of Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minnesota, New York and Utah, as well as the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of St. Luke’s, with whom he made his Carnegie Hall debut in a sold-out performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana (February 2024). He also maintains a strong international conducting presence, including engagements with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, SWR Symphonieorchester, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, a tour with Orchestre National d’Île de France, Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony, Royal Philharmonic (London), Ulster Orchestra, Danish National Chamber Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier/A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opéra de Rennes/The Turn of the Screw, Auckland Philharmonia, Sydney Symphony and Sao Paolo State Symphony. In the 2024/25 season Tito will make his debut with Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of the Music Makers, Singapore.

As a proponent of new music, Tito champions the composers of our time through expanded programming, commissions, premieres, and recordings. He has conducted important premieres of works by Christopher Cerrone, Kenneth Fuchs, Dai Fujikura, Michael Hersch, Adam Schoenberg and Mauricio Sotelo. A great advocate of the music of Michael Hersch, Tito has led the world premieres of many of Hersch’s recent works, including On the Threshold of Winter at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014, his Violin Concerto with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2015 (also recorded with the International Contemporary Ensemble on the New Focus label), I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals and the script of storms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London. In the 2024/25 season Tito will conduct the world premiere performances of Hersch’s new opera And We, each.

A passionate educator, Tito regularly visits North America’s top educational institutions, summer music festivals and youth orchestras. He has led performances at the Aspen Music Festival, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, Kent/Blossom Music Festival, Music Academy of the West, New England Conservatory, New World Symphony, Oberlin Conservatory, Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, University of Texas at Austin, and National Repertory Orchestra, as well as a nine-city tour with the St. Olaf College Orchestra. Mostly recently, the Cleveland Institute of Music appointed Tito as Interim Principal Conductor & Guest Orchestral Studies Faculty for the 25/26 and 26/27 academic years.

Born in Queens, New York, Tito began his musical training as a violinist in New York City public schools. He attended the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program, and the Manhattan School of Music Pre-College Division. He furthered his training at Queens College (CUNY) as a violin student of Daniel Phillips. Tito received conducting training at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen where he studied with David Zinman and Murry Sidlin. He is the winner of the Aspen Music Festival’s 2005 Robert J. Harth Conductor Prize and the 2006 Aspen Conducting Prize, returning to Aspen as the festival’s Assistant Conductor in the summer of 2007, and later as a guest conductor.

Tito made his professional conducting debut in 2006 with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, invited by Leonard Slatkin as a participant of the National Conducting Institute. That same year, he made his Cleveland Orchestra debut at the Blossom Music Festival. He was awarded the 2009 Mendelssohn Scholarship sponsored by Kurt Masur and the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Foundation in Leipzig and was a prizewinner in the 2010 Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt.

Promoters please note: We update our biographies regularly and ask that they are not altered without permission. For updated versions, please e-mail: Jessica Grime