Michael Stern (born 17 December 1959) is an American conductor. He is currently music director of the National Repertory Orchestra (Breckenridge, Colorado) and of Orchestra Lumos. He is artistic advisor to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and the Iris Collective. He is music director laureate of the Kansas City Symphony.
Stern is the son of Vera Stern and the violinist Isaac Stern. He obtained his undergraduate degree in American history from Harvard College in 1981. Subsequently, he studied under conductor Max Rudolf at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, graduating in 1986. Stern also studied for one summer at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute and for two summers at the Pierre Monteux Memorial School in Hancock, Maine. [1] [2]
Stern was an assistant conductor with The Cleveland Orchestra from 1986 to 1991. [3] [4] In September 1986, he debuted at the New York Philharmonic as one of three young conductors in a conducting workshop with Leonard Bernstein. [5]
Stern has served as principal guest conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon. From 1996 to 2000, Stern was chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the first American chief conductor in the orchestra's history. His work there is also notable for the orchestra's many recordings of American classical music during his tenure, including discs of works by Henry Cowell and Charles Ives.[ citation needed ]
In 2000, Stern founded the IRIS Orchestra in Germantown, Tennessee, an ensemble specialist in American contemporary music. He served as its music director until 2022, and is now advisor to the renamed ensemble, the IRIS Collective.
In 2005, Stern became music director of the Kansas City Symphony. [6] During Stern's tenure in Kansas City, the orchestra moved to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in 2011. [7] In March 2014, Stern, the orchestra, and Engage Mobile Solutions used four pairs of Google Glass to record a performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony. [8] He served in the post through the 2023-2024 season, [9] and is now music director laureate of the Kansas City Symphony.
In 2019, the Stamford Symphony (renamed Orchestra Lumos in June 2022 [10] ) appointed Stern as its next music director, effective with the 2020-2021 season, with an initial contract of five seasons. [11] . In January 2021, the National Repertory Orchestra (NRO) in Breckenridge, Colorado announced the appointment of Stern as its next music director. [12] [13]
Stern has been married twice. His first marriage was to the oboist Jeannette Bittar. [14] The marriage ended in divorce. [4] Stern's second marriage is to Shelly Cryer. The couple have two daughters and reside in Connecticut.
The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1972) are part of the organization. Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's music director in 1995, and concluded his tenure in 2020 when Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the position.
Charles Édouard Dutoit is a Swiss conductor. He is the principal guest conductor for the Saint Petersburg Philharmonia.
Efrem Kurtz was a Russian conductor.
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra. He gave his last performance with the San Francisco Symphony in January 2024 while fighting brain cancer.
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Its primary concert venue is Music Hall. In addition to its symphony concerts, the orchestra gives pops concerts as the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra. The Cincinnati Symphony is the resident orchestra for the Cincinnati May Festival, the Cincinnati Opera, and the Cincinnati Ballet. Additionally, the orchestra supports the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO), a program for young musicians in grades 9 to 12.
Gerard Schwarz, also known as Gerry Schwarz or Jerry Schwarz, is an American symphony conductor and trumpeter. As of 2019, Schwarz serves as the Artistic and Music Director of Palm Beach Symphony and the Director of Orchestral Activities and Music Director of the Frost Symphony Orchestra at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.
Joseph Clyde Schwantner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize.
Andrew Litton is an American orchestral conductor. Litton is a graduate of The Fieldston School. He studied piano with Nadia Reisenberg and conducting with Sixten Ehrling at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, receiving his Bachelor of Music degree and his Master of Music degree from in piano and conducting. He also received lessons in conducting from Walter Weller at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Edoardo Müller in Milan. His early teachers included John DeMaio. The youngest-ever winner of the BBC International Conductors Competition in 1982, he served as Assistant Conductor at Teatro alla Scala and Exxon/Arts Endowment Assistant Conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington D.C. under Mstislav Rostropovich (1982-1985), where subsequently he was Associate Conductor (1985-1986). Litton was a participant in the Affiliate Artists Exxon-Arts Endowment Conductors Program. In 2003, he was awarded Yale University's Sanford Medal.
Fabio Luisi is an Italian conductor. He is currently principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and chief conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra.
Daniel Hege is an American orchestral conductor. He is currently the music director of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra and the Binghamton Philharmonic, and is the principal guest conductor of the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra. Hege previously served as the music director of the former Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. He also makes numerous guest appearances with orchestras and music festivals across the country.
The Kansas City Symphony (KCS) is an American symphony orchestra based in Kansas City, Missouri. The orchestra is resident at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. The orchestra performs a 42-week season, and is also the accompanying orchestra for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City and the Kansas City Ballet.
The National Symphony Orchestra is the most important symphony orchestra in Mexico. With its origins traced back as 1881, along with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, it is the second-oldest symphony orchestra in the American continent. The orchestra does not have a permanent venue but performs regularly in the Grand Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City.
Edward Gardner is an English conductor. While still studying at the Royal Academy of Music in the late 1990s, he began his professional career as a choral conductor and repetiteur. Among other early posts, he was music director of Glyndebourne on Tour from 2004 to 2007. Gardner was music director of English National Opera from 2007 to 2015. From 2010 to 2016, he was principal guest conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and since 2013, he has been principal guest conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 2021, he has been principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2022, he also became artistic advisor of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, where he is scheduled to become the music director in 2024.
The Wichita Symphony Orchestra (WSO) is the oldest professional symphony orchestra in Kansas, performing out of Century II Concert Hall in downtown Wichita. It was founded in 1944.
William McGlaughlin is an American composer, conductor, music educator, and Peabody Award-winning classical music radio host. He is the host and music director of the public radio programs Exploring Music and Saint Paul Sunday.
Giancarlo Guerrero is a Costa Rican orchestra conductor, born in Nicaragua. He is the music director of the Nashville Symphony in Nashville, Tennessee. Guerrero is also Music Director of the Wrocław Philharmonic at the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland and has served as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal. He was formerly the associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and the music director of the Eugene Symphony. He has won six Grammy Awards.
The National Repertory Orchestra (NRO) is an American summer symphony orchestra that offers full fellowships to train young professional musicians for careers in music through performances, masterclasses and workshops. Based in Breckenridge, Colorado since 1993, its members, who range in age from 18 to 29, are selected from auditions held each year throughout the United States. NRO presents a summer music festival including two orchestral programs per week conducted by its Music Director, Michael Stern. The orchestra was founded in 1960 by cellist and conductor Walter Charles. Carl Topilow was Music Director from 1978 - 2020 and continues with the orchestra as the Music Advisor. The NRO was formerly known as the Blue Jeans Symphony based in Estes Park, Colorado, and later as the Colorado Philharmonic Orchestra based in Evergreen, Colorado.
Kenneth Kiesler is an American symphony orchestra and opera conductor and mentor to conductors. Kiesler is conductor laureate of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra where he was music director from 1980 to 2000 and founder and director of the Conductors Retreat at Medomak. In 2014, Kiesler was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Darius Milhaud's opera L'Orestie d'Eschyle. He is director of orchestras and professor of conducting at the University of Michigan.
Jonathan Leshnoff is an American classical music composer and pedagogue.
Finding Rothko is a composition for chamber orchestra by the American composer Adam Schoenberg. The work was commissioned by the Germantown, Tennessee-based IRIS Orchestra under the conductor Michael Stern. It was first performed by the IRIS Orchestra under Stern on January 13, 2007.
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