Michael E. Ruhling is Professor of Performing Arts in the College of Liberal Arts at the Rochester (NY) Institute of Technology, and conductor of the RIT Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra. He also teaches courses at the Eastman School of Music, and is the current conductor of the Rochester Medical Orchestra. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from The Catholic University of America, and master's degrees in orchestral conducting (U. of Missouri) and music history (Notre Dame). From 2004 to 2009 Michael served on the conducting and lecture faculty of the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, and was bass section leader in the Festival Chorus. He has appeared as guest conductor of the Brighton Symphony Orchestra, Prince George’s Philharmonic, Finger Lakes Symphony, UNLV Symphony and Opera, Rochester’s Air de Cour, and several other orchestras and choirs throughout the United States. He is the author of Johann Peter Salomon’s Scores of Four Haydn Symphonies: Edition with Commentary, published by the Edwin Mellen Press, and his essay on the symphonies of Michael Haydn is included in The Symphonic Repertoire, Vol. 1: The Eighteenth Century Symphony published by the Indiana University Press. Dr. Ruhling was named the 2008-2009 Christopher Hogwood Historically Informed Performance Fellow by the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest performing ensemble in the U.S. He is the first president of the Haydn Society of North America and editor of their online journal HAYDN, a member of the Haydn Society of Great Britain’s Committee of Honour, and recently served as secretary-treasurer of the Society for Eighteenth Century Music.