LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LATEST NEWS

MSM Celebrates Slatkin’s 75th Birthday with Concert and Gala
By leonard slatkin
October 25, 2019

The Manhattan School of Music honored Leonard Slatkin with a 75^th birthday concert and celebration in Neidorff-Karpati Hall on Friday, October 18. The program included works by four generations of Slatkin’s family, including Modest Altschuler, Felix Slatkin, Cindy McTee, and Daniel Slatkin.

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leonard slatkin
“A Hero’s Life”: Slatkin Celebrates 75 with the SLSO
By leonard slatkin
October 11, 2019

This weekend, Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin returns to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. As part of his 75^th birthday celebration, the orchestra will perform a new set of variations on Paganini’s most popular melody written by 11 composers with whom Slatkin has enjoyed a close collaboration.

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leonard slatkin

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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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