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LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

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Acclaim for William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, U.S.A.” at Opera Theatre of St. Louis
By leonard slatkin
June 4, 2021

OTSL resurrects a seldom-performed opera by William Grant Still, regarded as “the dean of African-American composers.” Highway 1, U.S.A. is an intimate, one-act work with a sweeping score that blends elements of Romanticism, blues, and musical theater.

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leonard slatkin
Rave Reviews for “Gianni Schicchi” at Opera Theatre of St. Louis
By leonard slatkin
June 1, 2021

Opera has returned to the Gateway City with the opening of Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s 2021 festival season. As reviewer Eric Meyer noted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Palpable anticipation radiated from audience, staff and performers alike before the opening performance.”

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FEBRUARY 2026

By leonard slatkin

Following the seven-week Asian tour of the past year, 2026 started off calmly. I was at home for a while, recuperating from jet lag and getting used to winter weather. For those of us from Los Angeles, this is no easy task.

As the month progressed, the news from Washington kept piling up. My colleagues at the Kennedy Center could not have truly anticipated how the transformation would disrupt their lives to the extent it has. I don’t want to dwell on this too much here. You all know what is going on.

Leonard Slatkin

Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard Slatkin is Music Director Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Directeur Musical Honoraire 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.

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 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), part of an ongoing series of essays that supplement the score-study process, published by Bloomsbury.

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