Tulsa Symphony Orchestra

TSO Advisory Board

Carol I. Crawford has served as Artistic Director of Tulsa Opera since 1993 and was appointed General Director in 1997. During her tenure she has expanded the repertoire of Tulsa Opera to include Oklahoma premieres of 20th-century and American operas such as Robert Ward’s The Crucible, Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble In Tahiti, David Carlson’s Dreamkeepers, Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues Of The Carmelites and Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, in addition to bringing Strauss (Ariadne auf Naxos) and Wagner (Tannhäuser) back into the Tulsa Opera repertoire. Tulsa Opera’s collaboration provided the basis for a second feature article on her tenure in the October 2001 issue of Opera News. Tulsa Opera was cited in the September 2003 issue of Opera News as one of that publication’s ten favorite American opera companies.

A passionate advocate for music education, Ms. Crawford inaugurated the Tulsa Youth Opera program in the spring of 1997 with a production of Hans Krása’s Brundibar involving 140 students aged 8 through 18. She has served as a member of the Tulsa Public Schools Arts Task Force and the Mayor’s Task Force for the Arts, as a Board member of the Oklahoma Israel Exchange (OKIE), and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, OPERA America, and the American Symphony Orchestra League. Crawford was the recipient of the 2001 Newsmaker of the Year award by the Tulsa chapter of the Women in Communications National Organization and named one of Oklahoma’s Most Influential Women in 2001 by Oklahoma Magazine. 

Crawford has held positions as Music Director of San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theatre, Music Director of Houston Grand Opera’s Texas Opera Theatre, Associate Music Director of the Virginia Opera, and Associate Conductor of the Memphis Symphony. She has guest conducted with opera companies and orchestras throughout the United States, including Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Portland Opera, Minnesota Opera, the New World Symphony, and the Staatstheater, Kassel, Germany.  Maestra Crawford studied with Leonard Bernstein, Sir Georg Solti, Otto-Werner Mueller, Boris Goldovsky, and Joan Caplan. She was invited by Bernstein to assist in the 1984 La Scala premiere of his opera A Quiet Place/Trouble In Tahiti.  Ms. Crawford holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting from Yale University in addition to undergraduate studies at the Juilliard School, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, and Manhattanville College.