Kyle Wiley Pickett

Conductor and Music Director of the Topeka Symphony Orchestra

Kyle Wiley Pickett is the Music Director and Conductor for the Topeka Symphony Orchestra and the Springfield Symphony in Missouri. He has held both posts since 2013. Prior to coming to the Midwest, Maestro Pickett was the Music Director and Conductor of both the North State Symphony in California and the Juneau Symphony in Alaska. 

In August of 2019, Maestro Pickett made his Asia conducting debut leading the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2023, he conducted the Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra in Hangzhou, China.  This season, he will conduct the Zhejiang Conservatory Orchestra at the Hangzhou Contemporary Music Festival. Internationally, he has conducted the City of Prague Philharmonic in the Czech Republic and the Guanajuato Symphony in Mexico. In 2018 he was a guest conductor with the Naples Philharmonic in Florida in a performance with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and he has conducted many performances with the Saint Louis Ballet, the Montana Ballet Company, and the Kansas Ballet here in Topeka. 

He conducted the University of Kansas Symphony in a special performance at the Kaufman Center in Kansas City in 2017, and has been a guest conductor with orchestras across the United States, including the York Symphony in Pennsylvania, the Rogue Valley Symphony in Oregon, and the Santa Rosa Symphony in California.

A native of Los Gatos, California, Maestro Pickett earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University. He holds a master’s degree in choral conducting from California State University, Chico, where he studied with William Ramsey, and he completed his doctoral studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore under the direction of Frederik Prausnitz. He and his wife Alice and their two sons split their time between Topeka and Springfield. 

Visit www.kylewileypickett.com for a complete biography.