James Conlon
Ravinia Festival Music Director
IT’S A CELEBRATION! The 2009 season is a landmark for Cincinnati May Festival as we honor James Conlon’s 30th ANNIVERSARY as our Music Director. James has captivated May Festival audiences with his artistic leadership for more Festivals than another music director in our 136-year history. Join us as the May Festival Chorus, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and stellar soloists from around the globe gather for this very special occasion. We are exceedingly proud of this outstanding relationship with James Conlon.
We invite you to share in this joyous celebration and to take advantage of the special events and packages we have for you. Opening Night on May 22 features Broadway legend and Tony winner, PATTI LUPONE, in her May Festival stage debut. Visit the website or call 513.381.3300 for tickets. See you in May!
James Conlon began his tenure as music director of Ravinia Festival during the 2005 season of North America’s oldest music festival. He has been a favorite guest conductor at Ravinia, making appearances since 1977. In 2007 Conlon’s contract was extended through the 2011 season, when he will complete his multi-year traversal of the Mahler symphony cycle with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia. Conlon is only the fourth music director in the Festival’s history.
One of today’s preeminent conductors, Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire and developed enduring relationships with the world’s most prestigious symphony orchestras and opera houses during more than 30 years of conducting.
Conlon embarked on his inaugural season as music director of the Los Angeles Opera in September 2006. Besides being music director at Ravinia, he also continues to serve as music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, America’s oldest choral festival, where he celebrates his 30th season in 2009. Conlon has served as Principal Conductor of the Paris National Opera (1995-2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989-2002), where he was simultaneously music director of the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic (1983-1991). He is continually engaged to guest-conduct the major orchestras and at the major opera houses throughout North America and Europe.
Since his debut with the New York Philharmonic at the invitation of Pierre Boulez in 1974, Conlon has appeared with virtually every major North American and European orchestra. He has also appeared with many of the world’s major opera companies, including Teatro alla Scala (Milan), the Royal Opera at Covent Garden (London), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence). Associated for more than 30 years with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 1976, Conlon has conducted more than 250 performances there, leading a wide range of works from the Italian, German, French, Russian and Czech repertoire. Having held the longest tenure of any conductor since 1939 at the Paris Opera, Conlon concluded his nine-year directorship there in July 2004, after conducting 32 operas for a total of more than 357 concerts. His leadership is associated with an increase in artistic standards, overall productivity and attendance, which, in an era of diminishing audiences, has increased in the past decade.
Since beginning his tenure at L.A. Opera, he has sought to establish a Wagnerian tradition in Los Angeles, leading seven Wagner works over the span of four years. Renowned for his interpretations of the composer’s repertoire in Europe, Conlon conducts his first Ring cycle in the U.S. over the next two seasons at L.A. Opera. During the 2008-09 season he leads the first two installments of the company premiere of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, beginning with Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. He will conduct the final two installments, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, in the 2009-10 season, with three complete Ring cycles performed in order in June 2010.
Also during the 2009-10 season at L.A. Opera, Conlon will continue his “Recovered Voices” series, a multi-year project during which he brings the music of composers affected by the Nazi regime to the L.A. Opera stage, conducting the U.S. premiere and new production of Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (“The Stigmatized”). He will also conduct Donizetti’s L’eliser d’amore.
In 2009 Conlon will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in four weeks of concerts at the Ravinia Festival. Next season he will also return to the Metropolitan Opera to conduct Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust, and will lead Verdi’s Louisa Miller at La Scala. His orchestral engagements include performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the United States, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Orchestra del Teatro Communale Bologna, Orquesta Nacional de Espana and the National Philharmonic of Russia in Moscow in Europe.
In an effort to raise public consciousness to the significance of the lesser-known works of two generations of composers who were suppressed, forced to emigrate, or executed by the Nazi regime, Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of this music in North America and Europe. This includes the works of such composers as Alexander Zemlinsky, Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Kurt Weill, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Karl-Amadeus Hartmann, Erwin Schulhoff, and Ernest Krenek. In addition to “Recovered Voices” at L.A. Opera, as music director of the Ravinia Festival, each summer Conlon presents a different composer from this group with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in the festival’s Breaking the Silence series, beginning in 2005 with a production conceived by Conlon of Ullmann's The Kaiser of Atlantis (written while interned in the concentration camp of Terezin). Since its first showing at The Juilliard School, the work has been reprised at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Ravinia Festival and in cooperation with the New World Symphony, The Houston Grand Opera and the L.A. Philharmonic, where it was performed in 2004 at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. At Ravinia Conlon has highlighted the works of Erwin Schulhoff, Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker. Conlon received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in August 2007 at Ravinia for his efforts in championing works of these composers. For 2009 he has selected Kurt Weill as Ravinia’s Breaking the Silence composer.
Conlon is committed to working with young pre-professional musicians. He recently completed a two-year special artist residency at The Juilliard School. Over the span of the residency Conlon worked with the school’s young artists in its three divisions—dance, drama and music—in a cross-genre educational project consisting of performances, symposia, master classes and coaching, meant to promote growth and historical curiosity in students and audience members alike. Conlon has devoted his time to teaching at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Tanglewood Music Center. He is actively involved in Ravinia’s Steans Institute for Young Artists as well as their model education and community partnerships programs, and plans to help lead and expand educational projects during his tenure at L.A. Opera. Conlon has been active since 1997 with the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where he not only conducts the final round of the competition, but also initiated a program through which he leads master classes and coaches finalists. His work in several competitions was taped and aired in a series on PBS, the most recent of which premiered in 2006.
Conlon has recorded extensively for the EMI, Erato, Capriccio and Sony Classical labels. In 2009 he won two Grammy Awards, Best Classical Recording and Best Opera Album, for conducting L.A. Opera’s production of Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, released on DVD on the EuroArts label. His first recording for Telarc was the world premiere recording of Franz Liszt’s St. Stanislaus oratorio, released in January 2004. He has made nine recordings of the Alexander Zemlinsky’s operas and orchestral works with the Gürzenich Orchestra-Cologne Philharmonic for EMI. Several of these recordings individually have earned prestigious international awards, and in October 2002 the series was awarded the ECHO Classic Award for “Editorial Achievement of the Year.” Conlon has also inaugurated a new series of 20th-century works for Capriccio, including a CD of works by Erwin Schulhoff with the Bayerischer Rundfunk, and a CD/DVD of the works of Viktor Ullmann with the Gürzenich Orchestra, which won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Award for Excellence). His other Capriccio recordings include works of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Dmitri Shostakovich with violinist Vladimir Spivakov and the Cologne Philharmonic. His most recent recording is a CD of works by Bohislav Martinu with the Bayerischer Rundfunk on Capriccio.
In 2008 PBS aired Shadows in Paradise, a documentary hosted and narrated by Conlon that tells the stories of German and Austrian composers and writers who fled the Nazi regime, hoping to make a living in Hollywood and the movie industry during the 1930s and 1940s. Also, during the spring of 2006, PBS aired a series of six shows hosted by Conlon entitled Encore as part of an ongoing series of documentaries on his work with the finalists of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which have also included Playing on the Edge and Hearing Ear to Ear with James Conlon. Among his other recent television appearances on PBS are Concerto, six half-hour shows hosted by Conlon, and Cincinnati May Festival 2000.
In the spring of 2008 Conlon was awarded the Medal of the American Liszt Society in recognition of his distinctive performances of the composer’s works, and Italy’s Premio Galileo 2000 Award for his significant contribution to music, art and peace in Florence. He is one of five first recipients of the annual Opera News Awards, presented in 2005. He has been honored by The New York Public Library as a "Library Lion," an annual award given to individuals in recognition of their contributions through their work, and was awarded an honorary doctor of music degree by The Juilliard School in 2004. In 1999 Conlon received the Zemlinsky Prize, awarded only once before, for his efforts in bringing the composer’s music to international attention. Conlon was named an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1996, and in September 2004 he was promoted to Commander—the highest honor awarded by the Ministry of Culture in France. In September 2002 Conlon received France’s highest distinction from the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac—the Légion d’Honneur.