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Edward Cumming, outgoing music director of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, is sticking around town.

Cumming is the new associate professor of conducting and director of orchestral activities at The Hartt School at the University of Hartford. During the 2010-2011 academic year, Cumming served as Hartt’s Interim Director of Orchestral Activities while simultaneously concluding his nine-year tenure with the Hartford Symphony.

The appointment follows a year-long national search that considered more than 150 candidates.

In his new position, Cumming’s duties will include overseeing The Hartt School’s orchestral activities, including conducting the Hartt Symphony Orchestra, which typically gives six full-length programs a year. He also will teach conducting, score-reading and related courses. It is a tenure-track position.

“After many years in the profession, my main focus will now be teaching and making music with very gifted young musicians,” said Cumming, who conducted his final HSO concert Saturday night to a capacity audience at The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.. “I could not be happier with this new development. It is what I’ve always wanted to do, and to be doing it in Hartford, a city I love, is an added bonus.”

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra is undergoing changes of its own.

Carrie Hammond, fomer manager of corporate responsibility for United Technologies, is the new interim CEO of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

She began her position Tuesday and will serve with Carolyn Kuan, the HSO’s new music director, who succeeded Cumming after a two-year search.

The HSO board is in the process of searching for a new president and CEO to replace Kristen Phillips, who resigned last month to accept a position as senior vice president with Lincoln Financial Group at its greater Philadelphia headquarters. Phillips headed the HSO since 2008, coming over from Lincoln.

Hammond has worked on growth and development initiatives for the HSO since 1987, when she first moved to Hartford. She was active in the HSO Association of Volunteers and a co-founder of Capitol Arts, a young audience development non-profit organization that connected young professionals in Greater Hartford Area to area arts organization.

Hammond has an MBA from Harvard University with concentrations in service management and social enterprise, and a B.A. from Wellesley College with majors in economics and music.

Prior to coming to Hartford, Cumming was resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, where he also he served as music director of the nationally acclaimed Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure as resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra in Tampa, he was assistant professor of music atUniversity of South Florida.

Cumming has conducted the philharmonic orchestras of Los Angeles, Rochester and Buffalo, as well the San Diego, Oregon, San Antonio, Santa Barbara and Detroit symphony orchestras and the Boston Pops. In June 2010, he made his South American debut with the Filarmónica de Bogotá, conducting Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande on short notice. He also has conducted widely in Europe and Asia.

Cumming earned a doctorate in music in 1992 from Yale University, were he studied with Otto-Werner Mueller. As an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, he was awarded the prestigious Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement in the Arts. In May 2010, he received an Honorary Doctorate fromTrinity College.

Read Frank Rizzo‘s blog on theater, the arts and entertainment at http://www.courant.com/curtain. And be the first to know by following Frank on twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/ShowRiz.