ABOUT BRAD HOGARTH
Brad Hogarth is a versatile and multi-faceted musician, whose career has taken him from the finest concert halls in Europe to the frozen Arctic tundra and the dusty Black Rock Desert. He is especially passionate about musical outreach. Both as a performer and as an educator, Brad hopes to bring people and communities together through the power of live performance.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Brad is Music Director of the Juneau Symphony, Professor of Conducting at San Francisco State University, and Music Director and Conductor of the Art Haus Collective, known for presenting spectacular performances of classical and contemporary works in unique spaces. He is Associate Conductor of the Monterey Symphony, where he curates the orchestra's popular Love Letter concert series, which recently celebrated its sixth year with sold-out performances. He is also on faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he conducts the Conservatory Wind Ensemble, and serves as Music Director of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra
Brad has appeared as a guest conductor with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, Marin Symphony, Symphony San Jose, Eastman Wind Ensemble, Eastman Brass Guild, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and Bay Brass, among others. He also conducts many of Grammy-winning composer Mason Bates' Mercury Soul projects, an interdisciplinary performance collective that brings classical music into dialogue with electronic music and other art forms. Brad served on the conducting staff of the 2022 National Brass Ensemble recording, concert, and institute.
Brad is particularly interested in bringing new music to life, championing underrepresented composers, and connecting musical traditions with the communities and places that shape them. With the Juneau Symphony, he led the April 2026 premiere of Edward Littlefield's Overture to Kutulagaaw: The Tlingit-Russian Battles, a work connected to the first-ever opera in the Tlingit language. The orchestra is also commissioning a new work by Marko Bajzer, which is a portrait of Alaska's Glaciers, and a part of his larger work, From Sea to Shining Sea. His commitment to expanding the orchestral repertoire extends to historical music as well. Through his work on nineteenth-century American composer Francis Johnson, Brad is helping bring the music of a once-prominent but now largely overlooked composer back to the concert stage. This work was recognized with San Francisco State University's Marcus Transformative Research Award.
In August 2017, Brad conducted the Art Haus Collective's ballet production of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring at Burning Man, performing for an estimated 10,000 people. Photographs from the event appeared in USA Today and Business Insider, and the production was featured in the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery exhibition No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man. Brad was Music Director and Conductor of the Contra Costa Wind Symphony from 2015 to 2022.
An accomplished trumpeter as well, Brad performs regularly with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the Bay Area and beyond. He can be heard on the San Francisco Symphony's recording of Ives' Symphony No. 4 and the San Francisco Ballet's recording of Lowell Liebermann's Frankenstein. He toured with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra to the Kennedy Center for the 2018 SHIFT Festival and has performed as guest principal trumpet with the Louisville Orchestra. As a soloist, Brad has performed works by Arutunian, Copland, Ives, Martin, and Tomasi, among others, with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the country.
Brad's commitment to music education is central to his work as a conductor and performer. Before joining the faculty at San Francisco State University, he served as Chair of Instrumental Music and directed the band and full orchestra at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts. In 2014, he conducted the school's orchestra at SFJAZZ for the Other Minds Festival, the first student ensemble to appear in the festival's history. Earlier in his career, he taught music at Gunma Kokusai Academy in Ōta, Gunma, Japan.
At San Francisco State University, Brad has received the 2021 LCA Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2019–2020 Presidential Award for Professional Development. He earned a double degree in trumpet performance and music education from the Eastman School of Music, studied for a semester at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany, and holds a master's degree in trumpet performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His principal trumpet teachers were James Thompson and Mark Inouye.