Matthew Mailman

Dr. Matthew Mailman is Professor of Conducting in the Wanda L. Bass School of Music at Oklahoma City University, a position he has held since 1995. Dr. Mailman has had extensive and diverse experience conducting operas, musicals, orchestras, bands, choirs, and chamber music. He serves as a Music Director for the Oklahoma Opera and Music Theater Company and as Music Director of OCU's award-winning Wind Ensemble and Wind Philharmonic. 

Dr. Mailman teaches graduate and undergraduate conducting and coordinates OCU's Masters in Conducting program. He has led the Wind Philharmonic in eighteen world premieres, on five tours, at two OK Mozart Festivals, and at nine convention performances. A champion of new music, he has worked with many significant composers, including Nico Muhly, Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, Cathy Likhuta, Michael Daugherty, Edward Knight, Brian Balmages, Jennifer Jolley, Judy Bozone, Karel Husa, Jack Stamp, Frank Ticheli, Martin Mailman, Ron Nelson, and Cindy McTee.

At OCU, Dr. Mailman has conducted fifty-five operas and musicals. In April/May 2023, he music directed Sunday in the Park with George with El Paso Opera. He recently won BroadwayWorld Oklahoma’s 2023 Best Music Direction & Orchestral Performance award for OCU’s 2023 fall production of Sweeney Todd. As Conductor/Artist in Residence at Opera in the Ozarks, he conducted Carlisle Floyd's opera Susannah in the summer of 2007 and Mozart's Cosí fan Tutte in 2008.

In December 2023, he was a top-5 finalist for the 2023 Warsaw Wind Band Conducting Competition in Warsaw, Poland, and he was one of 10 conducting fellows selected for the 2014 Baltimore Chamber Orchestra Summer Conducting Seminar with Markand Thakar and Henry Fogel. He is a frequent convention clinician.

Dr. Mailman has been an associate conductor with the Oklahoma Youth Orchestras, Inc. since 1997, and is the Music Director of the Oklahoma Youth Winds, which he founded in 2004 and which was selected to perform for the first time at the 2013 Oklahoma Music Educators Association Annual In-service and again in 2015 and 2017. With OYW, he founded the Annual Student Conductor Competition, the OYW National Composition Competition, and the OYW/ NAfME Teaching Internship. For five years, Dr. Mailman hosted a weekly radio program, "No Strings Attached”, on 90.1 FM KCSC Edmond-Oklahoma City/ 91.9 KBCW McAlester during which time he wrote and produced 180 new shows. His work has been published in The Instrumentalist and Teaching Music, and he is a research associate and writer for 9 volumes in the series Teaching Music Through Performance in Band. Southern Music published his arrangement of Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 2, K. 314 for Harmonie. 

Dr. Mailman is a native of Denton, Texas. He earned his bachelor of music and master of music degrees from Northwestern University where he studied with John P. Paynter. He earned his doctorate in conducting at the University of North Texas where he studied with Eugene Corporon and Anshel Brusilow. His father, the renowned composer Dr. Martin Mailman, was Composer-in-Residence at the University of North Texas for thirty-four years. His mother, Mary Nan Mailman, a student of Rosina Lhévinne at the Juilliard School of Music, was a concert pianist and teacher at the University of North Texas.

Dr. Mailman’s can be found online on his professional website, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. He is a BMI songwriter, artist, and publisher.

Collaborative and nurturing.