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LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

LEONARD SLATKIN

CONDUCTOR | COMPOSER | AUTHOR

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DSO’s 2018 William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series Kicks Off
By leonard slatkin
January 9, 2018

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra returns to seven Metro Detroit venues as the 2018 William Davidson Neighborhood Concert Series gets underway. The program includes Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (with piano prodigy Harmony Zhu), and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter.”

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leonard slatkin
Leonard Slatkin’s Conducting School, Lesson Fifteen: How It Looks and Sounds, Part Two
By leonard slatkin
December 15, 2017

This month, Maestro Slatkin teaches viewers how to conduct two short excerpts for the purpose of practicing beat patterns, the first from Copland’s “Hoe Down” from Rodeo, and the second from the last movement of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1.

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JANUARY 2026

By leonard slatkin

We made it! Somehow, we managed to get through 2025 and are heading into the New Year with hopes that may or may not be dashed by the many variables in our lives now. But at least for this musician, the year ended on several notes of optimism contained within the piece I led in Tokyo.

The month started off in a city that I had never heard of, much less conducted in. Takasaki is located in the Gunma Prefecture, about an hour’s train ride from Tokyo Station. The Gunma Symphony Orchestra was kind enough to ask me to be part of its eightieth anniversary celebrations.

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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