Guest ArtistsSteven Sloane, conductor

American conductor Steven Sloane is a versatile and dedicated musician. Mr. Sloane's extraordinarily creative and visionary concepts have garnered him respect in artistic circles, as well as in the realm of cultural politics. A student of Eugene Ormandy, Franco Ferrara and Gary Bertini, he has served as Music Director of the Spoleto Festival USA and of Opera North in Leeds. He also served as Music Director of the American Composers Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra (2007-13). Mr. Sloane is a frequent guest with prestigious orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Beginning in the 2018-19 season Steven Sloane has been named Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Malmö Opera, where he featured in the opening of the concert season with music by Gershwin and Bernstein in September 2018 as well as in a new production of The Flying Dutchman to be premiered in February 2019. This season will also see him return to the Spoleto Festival in May 2019 for a new production of Salome.

As the long-term General Music Director of the Bochum Symphony, which he transformed into one of Germany's leading orchestras, Mr. Sloane pushed forward the building of the orchestra's own music center, the Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr. It was inaugurated in October 2016 to international acclaim. His latest musical achievements with the orchestra have included a tour with Mahler's Symphony No. 9 to the Tongyeong Festival 2018 in South Korea and staged concert performances of Hans Werner Henze's Floß der Medusa at the RuhrTriennale festival. A highlight of the current season in Bochum will be a thematic focus on the role of Kundry in performances of Wagner's Parsifal.

A sought-after opera conductor, Mr. Sloane's engagements have taken him to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Le nozze di Figaro), Los Angeles Opera (Goldenthal: Grendel), San Francisco Opera (Wallace: Bonesetter's Daughter), Royal Danish Opera (Madama Butterfly), Houston Grand Opera (The Makropulos Case, The Magic Flute), Welsh National Opera (Iphigénie en Tauride), Deutsche Oper Berlin (The Love for Three Oranges) Stuttgart Opera (Macbeth), as well as to festivals in Hong Kong (Salome), Santa Fe (Katja Kabanova), Edinburgh (Genoveva), Salzburg (Feldman: Neither) and New York (Lincoln Center Festival with Zimmermann's Die Soldaten).

Recent opera highlights include a new production of Britten's A Midsummer's Night Dream at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the outstanding Berlin premiere of Aribert Reimann's Medea at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2017 as well as Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur at the Frankfurt Opera.

Education and promoting young musicians have always been of great importance to Stephen Sloane. He has regularly conducted youth orchestras such as Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Bundesjugendorchester and Young Israel Philharmonic; since 2013 he has served as professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he founded the International Conducting Academy Berlin.