Leonard Slatkin
Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin is Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and of the Orchestre National de Lyon, Conductor Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, Artistic Consultant to the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and Artistic Advisor to the Nashville Symphony. He maintains a rigorous schedule of guest conducting and is active as a composer, author, and educator.
The 2025/2026 season includes engagements with the National Symphony Orchestra (Dublin), Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra, USC Thornton Symphony (Los Angeles), Las Vegas Philharmonic, Taiwan Philharmonic (National Symphony Orchestra), KBS Symphony Orchestra (Seoul), Gunma Symphony Orchestra (Takasaki), NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), Nashville Symphony, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Franz Schubert Filharmonia (Tarragona), Prague Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica George Enescu (Bucharest), Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria, and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
The artist has received six Grammy Awards and 35 nominations. Naxos recently reissued Vox audiophile editions of his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra recordings featuring the works of George Gershwin, Sergei Rachmaninov and Sergei Prokofiev. Other Naxos recordings include Slatkin Conducts Slatkin – a compilation of pieces written by Camille Saint-Saëns, Maurice Ravel, Hector Berlioz, Aaron Copland, Alla Borzova, Cindy McTee, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
A recipient of the National Medal of Arts (USA), Leonard Slatkin also holds the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. He has been awarded the Prix Charbonnier from the Fédération des Alliances Françaises (USA), and the League of American Orchestras’ Gold Baton. His debut book, Conducting Business (2012), for which he received the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ (ASCAP) Deems Taylor Special Recognition Award, was followed by Leading Tones (2017) and Classical Crossroads: The Path Forward for Music in the 21st Century (2021). His latest books are Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century (2024) and Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Nineteenth Century (2024, Bloomsbury Publishing).
[2026]