of Livingston County, Michigan         

Conductor Warren Puffer Jones is in his seventh year as Music Director/Conductor of Arbor Opera Theater and Music Director of the Ann Arbor Cantata Singers. He is also the newly appointed Conductor for the Livingston Symphony Orchestra. Equally comfortable with the operatic, orchestral and choral repertoires, Jones has received acclaim as a rising talent in the new generation of conductors. In recent seasons he has led productions for the Comic Opera Guild and the University of Michigan Gilbert & Sullivan Society and conducted the Dexter Community Orchestra. Last season he conducted the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and Campus Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Detroit Medical Orchestra, an ensemble of doctors and medical students that gives charity benefit concerts.

Puffer has also served as Assistant Conductor with the Plymouth Canton Symphony Society, the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra and Opera Illinois. His operatic repertoire includes La Bohème, Carmen, La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Giovanni, Die Fledermaus, Madama Butterfly, Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, Adamo’s Little Women and the Gilbert & Sullivan favorites The Pirates of Penzance and Iolanthe. A native of Oklahoma City, Mr. Jones did his undergraduate work at Yale University and received a Master's degree in choral conducting from Indiana University, with further study at the Conductor's Institute at Bard. He is currently working toward the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Michigan, where he studies with Kenneth Kiesler. He has directed concerts in twenty-two countries and throughout the U.S., including appearances at the National Concert Hall in Dublin and New York's Alice Tully Hall. He and his wife, soprano Kelly Holst, and their son Isaac live in Ann Arbor.