Conductor Michael Stern is in his fourth season as Music Director of the Kansas City Symphony, which has been hailed for its remarkable artistic and institutional growth and development since his tenure began. The Kansas City Symphony and Stern concluded their first year together by making a recording for the Naxos label which was released in 2007, and in 2008 together they made their first recording for Grammy Award-winning Reference Recordings of music by Sullivan and Sibelius inspired by Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', scheduled for release in July 2008. The 2008-09 season also marks Stern's first as Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestre National de Lille, France.
Stern is founding Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the IRIS Orchestra (Germantown, Tennessee). Under his direction, the IRIS Orchestra has been unanimously heralded for the brilliance of its playing, its varied programming with special emphasis on American contemporary music, and for its acclaimed recordings on the Naxos and Arabesque labels. IRIS has embraced as a central part of its mission a deep commitment to furthering American composers and has commissioned works by Stephen Hartke, Richard Danielpour, Edgar Meyer, Jonathan Leshnoff, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, among others.
In 2000 Stern concluded his tenure as chief conductor of Germany's Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra. The first American chief conductor in the orchestra's history, he was offered the post almost immediately after making his debut with them in March 1996. In addition to their work in concert, for broadcast and tour Stern and the orchestra made several recordings of American repertoire, notably a disc of Henry Cowell's works, as well as a series devoted to the music of Charles Ives, including a live recorded performance of the "Universe" Symphony and their first recording of the "Emerson" piano concerto.
In September 1991, he was appointed permanent guest conductor of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France, a position which he held for four years. He has also appeared with the national orchestras of Paris, Bordeaux, Lille, and Toulouse. Elsewhere, Stern has led such orchestras as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Bergen Symphony, the Beethovenhalle Orchestra in Bonn, the Deutsche Symphoniker (DSO) in Berlin, the Budapest Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, and the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne. He has also been a frequent guest conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich and has recorded both with that orchestra and with the London Philharmonic for Denton Records. In the United Kingdom, he has conducted the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony (London), and the English Chamber Orchestra. Stern has appeared in the Far East with such orchestras as the National Symphony of Taiwan, the Singapore Symphony and Tokyo's NHK Symphony, and in September 2001, he led the Vienna Radio Symphony on a tour of China.
In North America, Stern has conducted the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., where he will return in winter 2010. He also appears regularly at the Aspen Music Festival and has served on the faculty of the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen. From 1986 to 1991, Stern was the assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra. In September 1986, he made his New York Philharmonic debut as one of three young conductors invited by Leonard Bernstein to participate in a conducting workshop that culminated in two concerts at Avery Fisher Hall.
Stern received his degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his major teacher was the noted conductor and scholar Max Rudolf (whose famous textbook, "The Grammar of Conducting," Stern co-edited for its third edition). He also edited a new volume of Rudolf's collected writings and correspondence, published in January 2002 by Pendragon Press. His studies have included two summers at the Pierre Monteux Memorial School in Hancock, Main, under the tutelage of Charles Bruck. Born in 1959, Michael Stern is a graduate of Harvard University, where he earned a degree in American History in 1981.
