Ravinia Festival Music Director Designate
James Conlon, one of today's pre-eminent conductors, is Music Director Designate of Ravinia Festival, which hosts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in its summer residency. He will become Music Director of North America’s oldest music festival effective with the 2005 season. His relationship with Ravinia Festival dates back to 1977, when he was invited to perform by Music Director James Levine and Executive Director Edward Gordon. Since then he has guest conducted at Ravinia during 18 seasons, including annual appearances from 1977 through 1990.
Conlon has conducted a broad range of the operatic, symphonic and choral repertoire in nearly every music capital in the United States, Europe and Japan. Since 1995 Conlon has served as Principal Conductor of the Paris National Opera. In July 2002 he concluded his 13-year tenure as General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany. He was simultaneously Principal Conductor of the Gurzenich Orchestra-Cologne Philharmonic and, from 1989 to 1996, Chief Conductor of the Cologne Opera. Conlon was also Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 1983 to 1991, and since 1979 has served as Music Director of the Cincinnati May Festival, America's oldest choral festival.
Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974 at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, Conlon has appeared with virtually every major North American and European orchestra. In the United States he has led the Boston, Chicago and Pittsburgh symphonies, the Cleveland, Minnesota and Philadelphia orchestras, the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics, and Washington's National Symphony Orchestra. In Europe he has conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, l’Orchestre de Paris, l’Orchestre National de France, Orchestra Sinfonica di Santa Cecilia, and the Kirov Orchestra, among many others.
Associated for more than 25 years with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 1976, Conlon has conducted more than 200 performances with that company, leading a wide range of 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).
During the 2003-04 season in the United States, Conlon leads the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. He also celebrates his 25th anniversary as Music Director of the Cincinnati May Festival. Also this season, he will conduct concerts featuring the works of Erwin Schulhoff at Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as well as at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The concerts are part of a project, conceived by Conlon and begun during the 2002-03 season, intended to raise the consciousness of the public to the significance of the works of composers whose lives were affected by the Holocaust, a considerable body of work that represents an important link in the history of 20th-century music.
Since the beginning of his tenure with the Paris Opera, Conlon has conducted 37 operas, most of them new productions, with a total of over 335 operatic and symphonic performances. Among the highlights of the past seven years are four Wagner operas (Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer), seven Verdi operas (Les vêpres siciliennes, Falstaff, Don Carlo, La traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Macbeth), as well as the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Perelá, l’Homme de Fumèe, and highly praised new productions of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. He led the French premiere of Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, as well as the first Parisian production of Dvorák’s Rusalka. He also led productions of Peter Grimes, Wozzeck, Der Rosenkavalier, Turandot, Don Giovanni, Le nozze de Figaro, and the Paris Opera’s first production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina in 75 years.
During his tenure in Cologne, Conlon conducted 231 performances of 34 operas and more than 230 symphonic concerts, including virtually all the major works of Wagner, Mahler, Zemlinsky, Beethoven and Berg. In addition, under his stewardship, the orchestra has recorded over 20 CDs, several of which have earned prestigious international awards.
Conlon has recorded extensively for the EMI, Erato, Capriccio and Sony Classical labels. He recently made his first Telarc recording of the world premiere of Franz Liszt’s St. Stanislaus oratorio, released in January 2004. A champion of the works of Alexander Zemlinsky, he has made nine recordings of the composer’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 with Capriccio, including the recently released CD and DVD of the works of Viktor Ullmann that won the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Award for Excellence). His other Capriccio recordings include the works of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Dmitri Shostakovich with violinist Vladimir Spivakov and the Cologne Philharmonic.
During the 2002-03 season, PBS aired Concerto, six half-hour shows hosted by Conlon. Among his other recent television appearances on PBS are “Cincinnati May Festival 2000” as well as “Playing on the Edge” and “Hearing Ear to Ear with James Conlon,” two documentaries featuring his work with the finalists of the Van Cliburn Competition.
A native of New York, James Conlon is a graduate and former faculty member of The Juilliard School of Music. He made his professional debut in 1971 conducting Boris Godunov at the Spoleto Festival, and his New York debut the following year while still a student, leading a Juilliard production of La bohème on the recommendation of Maria Callas.
In 1999, Conlon received the Zemlinsky Prize, awarded only once before, for his efforts in bringing the composer's music to international attention. He was named an Officier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government in 1996, and in September 2002 he received France's highest distinction—the Légion d'Honneur—from the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac.