Leonard Slatkin

Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin was recently named Music Director of the Nashville Symphony. He will take the artistic helm of the orchestra beginning with the 2026/27 season, following his previous appointment as Artistic Advisor. His other titles include Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon (ONL), Conductor Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO), Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria (OFGC), and Artistic Consultant to the Las Vegas Philharmonic (LVP). He maintains a rigorous schedule of guest conducting and is active as a composer, author, and educator.

The 2025-26 season includes engagements with the National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra, SLSO, USC Thornton Symphony, LVP, Taiwan Philharmonic, KBS Symphony Orchestra (Seoul), Gunma Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra (Tokyo), Nashville Symphony, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Warsaw Philharmonic, Franz Schubert Filharmonia (Barcelona), ONL, Prague Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica George Enescu (Bucharest), OFGC, and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Slatkin has received six Grammy awards and 35 nominations. Naxos recently reissued Vox audiophile editions of his SLSO recordings featuring the works of Gershwin, Rachmaninov, and Prokofiev. Other Naxos recordings include Slatkin Conducts Slatkin—a compilation of pieces written by generations of his family—as well as works by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Berlioz, Copland, Borzova, McTee, and Williams. In addition, he has recorded the complete Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky symphonies with the DSO (available online as digital downloads).

A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Slatkin also holds the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. He has been awarded the Prix Charbonnier from the Federation of Alliances Françaises, Austria’s Decoration of Honor in Silver, and the League of American Orchestras’ Gold Baton. His debut book, Conducting Business (2012), for which he received the 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 (spring 2024) and Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Nineteenth Century (fall 2024), part of an ongoing series of essays that supplement the score-study process, published by Bloomsbury.

He holds honorary doctorates from many institutions, including The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Michigan State University, Indiana University, the University of Rochester, the University of Maryland-College Park, George Washington University, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and Washington University in St. Louis.

Slatkin has held posts as Music Director of the New Orleans Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, SLSO, National Symphony Orchestra, DSO, and ONL, and he was Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London. He has served as Principal Guest Conductor of London’s Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis, where he founded their annual Sommerfest. Furthermore, he has held titled conducting positions with the Blossom Music Center and both the Grant Park and Great Woods music festivals.

He has conducted virtually all the leading orchestras in the world. Among those in America are the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Elsewhere he has worked with all five London orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, Munich’s Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Slatkin’s opera conducting has taken him to the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Santa Fe Opera, Vienna State Opera, Stuttgart Opera, and Opéra Bastille in Paris.

Founder and former director of the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and National Conducting Institute in Washington, DC, Slatkin remains a passionate music educator. He has conducted and taught at such institutions as the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, the Aspen Music School, the Jacobs School at Indiana University, the National Orchestral Institute, the Music Academy of the West, and the New World Symphony.

Born in Los Angeles to a distinguished musical family, he is the son of violinist-conductor Felix Slatkin and cellist Eleanor Aller, founding members of the famed Hollywood String Quartet. He began his musical training on the violin and first studied conducting with his father, followed by Walter Susskind at Aspen and Jean Morel at Juilliard. He is the father of one son, Daniel, and makes his home in St. Louis with his wife, composer Cindy McTee.