Leonard Slatkin

Music Director

 Photograph of music director and conductor Leonard Slatkin

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

In addition to multiple appearances in Nashville, the 2026/27 season includes engagements with the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, OFGC, Orchestra of the Music Makers (Singapore), New World Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Florida Orchestra, SLSO, Frost Symphony Orchestra (Miami), National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Orquesta de Valencia.

Slatkin has received six GRAMMY® awards and 35 nominations. His most recent recording, Pictures at an Exhibition: The Paintings of Bob Peak, was released on Warner Classics in 2026. Naxos has 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.

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 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 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). A second volume of twentieth-century score studies will be published by Bloomsbury in February 2027 as part of this ongoing series.

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. 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.

He has conducted virtually all the leading orchestras in the world, including the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich), Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Orchestre de Paris, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as all five London orchestras.

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.

Born in Los Angeles to a distinguished musical family, 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 makes his home in St. Louis with his wife, composer Cindy McTee. For more information, visit leonardslatkin.com.