James Conlon

About

Also known as: Jeimuzu konron, ジェイムズ コンロン

James Conlon has spent decades building one of the most wide ranging careers in classical conducting, leading major orchestras and opera houses across North America and Europe. He made his New York Philharmonic debut in 1974 at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, becoming the youngest conductor in that orchestra's subscription series at the time. His operatic credentials run deep too: more than 250 performances at the Metropolitan Opera alone, covering Italian, German, French, Russian and Czech repertoire. As music director of Los Angeles Opera since the 2006 to 2007 season, Conlon has championed a project called Recovered Voices, dedicated to operas by composers whose lives and work were devastated by the Third Reich. Composers like Viktor Ullmann, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Erwin Schulhoff have all featured in his programming. He also led the first ever Los Angeles performances of Wagner's complete Ring cycle in 2008 to 2009. It is a career defined as much by what he has chosen to resurrect as by the grand stages he has commanded.