One of today‘s preeminent conductors, James 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 through more than 30 years of conducting.  He has served as Music Director of the Cincinnati May Festival since 1979.

Mr. Conlon embarked on his inaugural season as Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in September 2006.  He is also currently Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  Mr. 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 opera houses throughout North America and Europe.

Since his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974 at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, Mr. 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 almost 30 years with the Metropolitan Opera, where he made his debut in 1976, Mr. 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, Mr. Conlon concluded his nine-year directorship there in July 2004, after conducting 32 operas with a total of more than 357 performances.  His leadership is associated with an increase in artistic standards, overall productivity and attendance, which, in an era of diminishing audiences, has increased exponentially in the past decade.

Mr. Conlon began his first season as Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera with gala performances of Verdi’s La Traviata, starring Renée Fleming and Rolando Villazón.  During the 2008-09 season at LA Opera he will conduct the first ever Los Angeles performances of Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, part of a two-season series culminating in three complete cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen performed in 2010. He also continues his "Recovered Voices" series, a multi-year project during which he brings the music of composers suppressed by the Nazi regime to the LA Opera stage, with the company premiere of Walter Braunfels' The Birds (Die Vögel). Last year the "Recovered Voices" series included two one-act operas: the LA Opera adn the U.S. premiere of Fiktor Ullman's The Broken Jug and a new production of Alexander Zemlinsky's The Dwarf. He also conducts Puccinis Il Trittico directed by Woody Allen and William Friedkin; Robert Wilson's production of Madama Butterfly; and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.

Mr. Conlon's guest-conducting engagements during the 2008-09 seasons include performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic in the United States. In Europe he conducts the NDR Sinfonieorchester in Hamburg, Rotterdam Philharmonic (where he was Music Director from 1983-1991), and the National Philharmonic of Russia in Moscow.

In an effort to raise public consciousness to the significance of works of two generations of composers who were suppressed, forced to emigrate, or were executed by the Nazi regime, Mr. 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 LA Opera, as Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, each summer Mr. Conlon presents a different composer from this group with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 2005 with a production conceived by Mr. Conlon of Viktor Ullman's The Kaiser From Atlantis (written while interned in the concentration camp of Terezin). Since its first showing at The Juilliard School in New York, the work has been reprised at the Spleto Festival in Italy, the Ravinia Festival, and in cooperation with the New World Symphony, The Houston Grand Opera and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where it was performed in 2004 at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. At the Ravinia Festival, Mr. Conlon has since highlighted the works of Erwin Schulhoff, Alexander Zemlinsky, and most recently, Franz Schreker.

Mr. Conlon also continues his two-year special artist residency that began in the fall of 2007 at the Juilliard School. Over the span of the residency Mr. Conlon is working with the school's young artists in its three divisions – dance, drama, and music – in an educational project meant to promote growth and historical curiosity in students and audience members alike. The cross-genre consists of performances, symposia, master classes, and coaching. Mr. Conlon is committed to working with young pre-professional musicians and, in addition to his continual work with Juilliard ensembles, has devoted his time to teaching at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Tanglewood Music Center.  He will become actively involved in the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Institute for Young Artists as well as Ravinia’s model community outreach and education programs, and plans to help lead and expand educational projects during his tenure at Los Angeles Opera.  Mr. Conlon has been active with the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition since 1997, 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 the past two competitions was taped and aired in a special series on PBS, the most recent of which debuted in spring 2006.

Mr. Conlon has recorded extensively for the EMI, ERATO, Capriccio and SONY Classical labels.  He made his first recording for Telarc 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 2002 ECHO Classic Award for “Editorial Achievement of the Year.”  Mr. Conlon has also inaugurated a new series of 20th century works with 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 the works of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Dmitri Shostakovich with violinist Vladimir Spivakov and the Cologne Philharmonic, as well as a CD of works by Bohislav Martinu with the Bayerischer Rundfunk. Mr. Conlon conducted Verdi's La Traviata which was released on DVD by the Decca label. The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a 2007 EuroArts DVD recording featuring conductor Conlon and performers Anthony Dean Griffey, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus, has earned two 2009 Grammy® Award nominations in the categories of Best Classical Album (Award to Artists and Producers) and Best Opera Recoding (Award to Conductor, Producer, and Principal Soloists).

PBS has aired a series of six shows hosted by Mr. Conlon entitled "Encore," 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 Mr. Conlon, and “Cincinnati May Festival 2000.”

Mr. Conlon 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 the spring of 2008, Mr. 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. In recognition for his efforts in championing the works of composers silenced by the Third Reich, Mr. Conlon received the Crystal Globe Award from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in August 2007. He is one of five first recipients of the annual Opera News Awards, presented in 2005 in recognition of his distinguished achievement in opera. 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, Mr. Conlon received the Zemlinsky Prize, awarded only once before, for his efforts in bringing the composer’s music to international attention. Mr. 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, James Conlon received France’s highest distinction from the President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac—the Légion d’Honneur.

“James Conlon’s career is the story of brilliant promise fulfilled brilliantly.  Few artists have consolidated early success with the sustained and enduring excellence Conlon has achieved.  After more than thirty years as one of the classical-music world’s most in-demand maestros, Conlon seems to be in the prime of his conducting life, now set to hold three of the highest profile jobs in American music:  music director of the Cincinnati May Festival, where he recently celebrated his 26th anniversary; music director of the Ravinia Festival, where he began his tenure this past summer; and music director of Los Angeles Opera, a job he takes on in the 2006-2007 season.”
– F. Paul Driscoll, Opera News