Conductor

Burton Karson   Conductor

Burton Karson founded the Baroque Music Festival, Corona del Mar, in 1981 with the assistance of colleague and art historian Irmeli Desenberg, and has served continuously as the Festival’s Artistic Director and Conductor.
After a career as a boy soprano in Los Angeles, he studied piano with Paul Stoye and then musicology, keyboard performance and conducting at the University of Southern California, where he earned the degrees of Bachelor, Master and Doctor in music. He studied Baroque music and harpsichord with Alice Ehlers, and conducting with Charles Hirt and Ingolf Dahl. After teaching positions at USC and Glendale College, he became Professor of Music at California State University, Fullerton in 1965, and now is Professor Emeritus there.

A lifelong church musician, Dr. Karson served as organist and choirmaster at Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church from 1982 to 2000, and now serves there as Organist & Choirmaster Emeritus.

Dr. Karson is well known as a pianist and organist. For many years he was a noted lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Carmel Bach Festival, San Diego Opera and Symphony Orchestra, Long Beach Symphony Orchestra and others, and he continues as a regular pre-concert speaker for the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. Editor of a Festschrift of musicological essays published by the BYU Press, his articles and reviews have appeared in The Musical Quarterly, the Los Angeles Times and other periodicals, and he writes the program notes for our Festival.

Dr. Karson is a founder of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and serves as a board member of OCPAC’s Founders Plus and the Philharmonic Society of Orange Country. He was twice honored by California State University, Fullerton with awards in recognition of his contributions to the cultural life of our community and for his academic research in Europe that has led to critically acclaimed first American performances of unknown and long-neglected works of Baroque music in our Corona del Mar Festivals.