[3][4] Edwards has been conducting since age seventeen when he became music director of the Maidstone Opera Company in England, a position he held for six years.
Throughout his lifetime, Edwards has received instruction from Anshel Brusilow (Dallas), chorus leader Simon Johnson (London), Eduardo Mata, Barry Wordsworth, and Victor Yampolsky (Northwestern University).
He contributed to Stagebill in Chicago, Dallas, London and Washington, D.C. and wrote program notes for Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma and the Guarnari Quartet.
[2][6] He has been invited to speak at the American Symphony Orchestra League convention in Boston and assisted with the organisation's "Meet for the Millennium" project.
He was selected unanimously by a twelve-person committee from a field of more than one hundred candidates, and was officially handed the baton by Avshalomov at the season opening Riverside Classics concert on 30 August.
[8][13][14] After Avshalomov conducted the first half of the concert, Edwards completed PYP's set with performances of works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
[13][15] The program for the first subscription series concert, which received positive reception,[16] included: Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco Overture, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, and Paul Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber.
[20][21] The collaboration between PYP and Multnomah Community TV continued beyond 1996; in 1998 concerts were streamed as far away as Tucson, Arizona, and a 1999 recording became a finalist in the national Hometown Video Festival.
[24] The 1998–1999 season included performances in Salem, Newberg, Welches, St. Helens, and Milwaukie and Longview, Washington in addition to the regular subscription series.
On 10 February 1999 the orchestra opened a Portland Trail Blazers game at the Rose Garden performing The Star-Spangled Banner.
[33] One Seattle Post-Intelligencer contributor wrote that Edwards made a "fine choice" for the ensemble, noting that he "nurture[d], coache[d] and encourage[d] his musicians".
[38] During the final performance of the Olympia Symphony Orchestra's 2014–15 season it was announced that Edwards had signed a ten-year contract extension as its conductor.
[40] In May 2012, Edwards accepted the orchestra conductor position at the University of Puget Sound, a private liberal arts college located in Tacoma, Washington.
[14] Apart from music, Edwards likes the Chicago Bears, CrossFit, golf, kayaking, Masterpiece Theater, poetry, and Rhône wine along with the winemaking process.
[4] Edwards has shared that he would want to work at a vineyard or winery, or be a sports radio host or travel correspondent for a publication if he were not a conductor.