R. Douglas Sheldon graduated from Sidney High School in 1959, with honors and the school record for achievement points awarded for extra-curricular activities: sports, choir, band, Reflector, Student Council and the Maroon & White to name a few. In 1958 he was among the first American students sent to Europe as part of the American Field Service student exchange.
After graduating from Hamilton College with honors, Doug went to Brown University as a graduate assistant, Conductor of the Freshmen Glee Club, and Assistant Conductor of the Brown University and Pembroke College Glee Clubs.
Doug Sheldon returned to Hamilton College in 1964-65 to fill the conducting position of his mentor, John Baldwin, who was on sabbatical. He conducted the acclaimed choir on tours to New York, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit, and to Buffalo, where he led a choral program for Public Television. His several programs at the college included the Bach Mass in b Minor with the Paris Chamber Orchestra and singers from Hamilton and the Crane School of Music.
After a year spent working for the Music Director and General Manager of the Rochester Philharmonic he moved to a career in artist management in New York. Now a director, Senior Vice President and member of the Executive Committee of Columbia Artists Management, Mr. Sheldon has served that company continually since 1966 and is acknowledged internationally as one of the pre-eminent managers in classical music. He has represented and managed careers and touring projects for some of the world's leading artists and ensembles including Leonard Bernstein, Valery Gergiev, Leonard Slatkin, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Marilyn Horne, Grace Bumbry, the New York, Dresden and London Philharmonics, Boston, London and Pittsburgh Symphonies, Mariinsky Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, and China Philharmonic.
He has appeared as voice-over and principal interviewee in a 2009 international documentary feature length film about the musical life of the conductor Valery Gergiev and in Nike's international television ad for the 2008 Beijing Olympics along with Chinese pianist Yundi Li.
Mr. Sheldon also founded the Ames International Orchestra Festival in 1969, organized the first coliseum tour of the Boston Pops in 1972, arranged the debut US tour of André Rieu & the Johann Strauss Orchestra, toured the legendary Salzburg Marionette Theatre, and represented The Boys Choir of Harlem.
His pro bono activities include annually organizing and conducting the Hamilton College Alumni Reunion Male Choir each year since 1980, and he is a winner of that college's most prestigious award for alumni service, the Bell Ringer Award. Now in his thirty-eighth year as Music Director of Historic St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Perth Amboy, New Jersey, Mr. Sheldon donates his services and provides a large portion of the church's music budget. He has also been a guest conductor of the University Glee Club of New York in St. Thomas Church, and has conducted Orpheus Club of Philadelphia, a 65-voice male chorus, in both the Academy of Music and the Kimmel Center.
In 2005 he founded and conducted The Sheldon Singers, composed of 24 hand-picked vocalists, in Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall. This ensemble later evolved into the forty-voice Baldwin Festival Chorus of New York, which has presented annual concerts in Manhattan since 2008. He provides all the financial support of the chorus and is considered a mentor by many of the singers.
He reorganized, in 2004, the White Nights Foundation of America, which supports the musical activities of the two hundred thirty-one year-old Mariinsky Theater of Saint Petersburg, Russia. For a decade Doug served as director, Vice President and Vice Chairman of the foundation, raising over 8.5 million dollars to support the Mariinsky Opera, Ballet and Orchestra's musical activities in America.
Since 2000 Douglas has been a director of the Sidney Central Alumni Association, and has served as Vice President for Strategic Planning, Vice President of Operations and Interim President. Although the founding Chair of SCSAA Wall of Fame since 2004, he relinquished that position in early 2014 in order to accept and be elected to the position of President of the SCSAA Board of Directors.
Mr. Sheldon is married to Eileen Yencik, Smith College '63 and they enjoy their children, Douglas, Kirsten, and Alexandra and their grandchildren, Nicholas, Jason, Ian, Emily, and Emma. His father, Ray Sheldon, was invited to Sidney by Ralph Pyle to form an Industrial Arts department which he led from 1945-74. He also served as advisor to the Student Council and to the Student Concession teams at all SHS sporting events. Belle Sheldon, Doug's mother, began as a substitute teacher in 1953 and taught in the schools on Liberty and Pleasant Streets, and in Masonville. SCS Supervisor Ralph Pyle then asked her to teach Kindergarten and to be the administrator in charge of the elementary school teachers and staff in Sidney Center when that school opened.