Timothy Long is a distinguished conductor, pianist, and composer who is Artistic and Music Director of Opera at the Eastman School of Music and an Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. He is an enrolled citizen of both the Muscogee Nation and the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town and is matrilineally Choctaw. 

At the age of 16, Tim made his piano concerto debut with the Oklahoma Symphony Orchestra and has since performed as a soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Lawton (OK) Philharmonic, the Beethoven Society Orchestra of Washington DC, the Sociedad Filarmonica de Conciertos of Mexico City, the Eastman School Symphony Orchestra, and the Eastman Philharmonia. As a keyboardist, Tim has performed throughout the world at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, National Sawdust, the Kimmel Center, Jordan Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Herkules Hall in Munich, Dvořák Hall in Prague, La Halle aux Grains in Toulouse, the Oregon Bach Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, the Caramoor Festival, and the Dame Myra Hess Series in Chicago. 

Since early appointments as Associate Conductor at the New York City Opera and Assistant Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, he has had engagements with ensembles such as the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, the Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, the Eastman Philharmonia, the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, and the Continuum Ensemble of Toronto. His operatic engagements have included Boston Lyric Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Colorado, Utah Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and The New Group. 

Tim is president of The Plimpton Foundation (theplimptonfoundation.org), which promotes the work of Native American and First Nations performing artists through scholarships and commissions. 2024 marked the world premiere of Tim’s initiative, the North American Indigenous Songbook, which commissions North American Indigenous composers to write songs that are available for all to sing. The first round of composers included R. Carlos Nakai, Raven Chacon, Dawn Avery, Sage Bond, Charles Shadle, Timothy Archambault, Connor Chee, and Martha Redbone. Between the Moab Music Festival, the Eastman School of Music and the North American Indigenous Songbook, he has commissioned over 21 new compositions for the genres of song, chamber music, and orchestral composition. 

Tim’s recordings include Missing (Bright Shiny Things, 2025), Alburnum, with internationally renowned baritone Brian Mulligan (Bright Shiny Things, 2022), Beauty Intolerable: Songs of Sheila Silver (Albany Records, 2021), the American Classics recording of Dominick Argento song cycles with Brian Mulligan (2017 Naxos), the Opera America Songbook (Opera America, 2012), and The Music Teacher (Bridge Records, 2008), starring Wallace Shawn, Parker Posey, and Elizabeth Berkley. 

He has appeared on NPR’s More Than Music, CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, NBC’s Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN’s First of All with Victor Blackwell, and recently had a featured profile in the New York Times. Tim is proud to be on the Board of Directors of OPERA America and is a 2024 inductee into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. 

America and was inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2024. He resides in Rochester, New York, and New York City, and is a graduate of Oklahoma City University and the Eastman School of Music.