LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LATEST NEWS

Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Composer Jeff Beal to Release New Album
By leonard slatkin
July 17, 2026

LACO and Emmy Award-winning composer Jeff Beal have announced the release of the album Body in Motion, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Body in Motion includes Beal’s violin concerto of the same name, written for violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins, and Four Score, composed in honor of Slatkin’s 80th birthday.

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“Take Care of This House”: Slatkin Reflects on His Visit to the Kennedy Center
By leonard slatkin
June 4, 2026

Read Leonard Slatkin’s reflections on his recent visit to the Kennedy Center, where he spent twelve years as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.

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leonard slatkin

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JULY 2026

By leonard slatkin

If one pattern has defined my life in music, it is movement. I have never been very good at standing still. I have not taken what most people would call a sabbatical, and even my vacations have tended to come in pieces—days borrowed between engagements, or longer trips planned with the hope of disappearing, briefly, into someplace unfamiliar.

June felt unusual from the start. For the first time in a very long while, an entire month stretched before me without a single concert. After seven weeks in Asia at the end of 2025 and another nine in Europe earlier this year, I could no longer pretend that rest was optional. I was tired in the way travel and performance can make one tired—not only in body but in mind and spirit as well.

Leonard Slatkin

Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin is Music Director of the Nashville Symphony, Conductor Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria. He maintains a rigorous schedule of guest conducting and is active as a composer, author, and educator.

A six-time Grammy winner and 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 Lincoln Medal from Ford’s Theatre Society, 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 21^st 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). A second volume of twentieth-century score studies will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2027 as part of this ongoing series.

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