Benjamin Shwartz

Benjamin Shwartz recently completed a three season tenure as the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony where he assisted Michael Tilson Thomas, led numerous concerts, and was the Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra.  A highlight during his Music Directorship of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, was leading their European tour during summer 2008. Of one of their performances a critic wrote: Benjamin Shwartz practiced precision work; he by no means simply let his orchestra show off with brute sonic force, but shaped each phrase, even those of the solo winds, with the utmost refinement. In the slow movement, he succeeded in creating highly romantic moments of vibrant intensity in the strings. The Festsaal audience was in a frenzy.

Prior to his appointment as Resident Conductor with the San Francisco Symphony, Benjamin was assistant conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, Delaware Symphony and the Reading Symphony, Pennsylvania.

Benjamin Shwartz has conducted the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, New World Symphony, and Oregon Symphony Orchestra, among others.  This season he will make debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Duisburg Philharmonic, Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck, Georgian Chamber Orchestra, Nürnberger Symphoniker and the Landessinfonieorchester Schleswig-Holstein. Operatically, he has conducted new 2 productions at The Curtis Institute – La Sonnambula and Il viaggio a Reims.

Committed to new music, Benjamin Shwartz has led numerous world premieres of works by composers of his generation. Benjamin is the conductor of Mercury Soul [www.mercurysoul.org], a new music project, which he curates together with composer Mason Bates and designer Anne Patterson. The ensemble presents new music for acoustic and electronic instruments in clubs and other unusual locations blurring the lines between classical, experimental, and electronic music.

Raised in Los Angeles and Israel, Benjamin Shwartz attended the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, where he received the Shanis Fellowship to study conducting. While at Curtis, Benjamin Shwartz worked closely with Christoph Eschenbach in preparing the Curtis Orchestra for concerts. He also studied composition with James Primosch at the University of Pennsylvania, with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Germany, and at IRCAM in Paris.

Benjamin Shwartz has received numerous awards for his work including the Presser Music Award and was a prize-winner in the 2007 Bamberg Symphony Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition.

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Jonathan Schiffman

Jonathan Schiffman's imaginative, fresh and contemporary approach to repertoire and programming has captured the interest of both orchestras and audiences throughout Europe and the US. Informed by his background as a composer, Schiffman draws on a strong interest in contemporary music as well as a wide core repertoire to produce programmes which are both unique and appealing. His open enthusiasm and charismatic approach towards conducting have earned him the respect and admiration of many strong supporters.
After two seasons as assistant to Kurt Masur at the Orchestra National de France and Ivan Fischer at the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Schiffman held the position of Music Director with the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon-Provence from 2007-2010, during which time audience subscriptions doubled. In February 2006, Schiffman made his subscription concert debut with the Orchestre National de France which resulted in a 2008 reengagement as well as debuts with the Opéra National de Lorraine and the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire.


During the 2009-10 season, Schiffman made a number of notable debuts including with the Orchestre de Paris, the Northern Sinfonia in a sell-out concert with Sarah Chang at the Royal Albert Hall, the Copenhagen Philharmonic and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra. He also returned to the Opéra National de Lorraine to conduct a double-bill of Bernstein Trouble in Tahiti and Ravel L'Enfant et les Sortilèges. In 2010-11, Schiffman has debuts with the Orchestre National de Lyon, BBC Scottish Symphony, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Dublin, Het Gelders Orkest, Helsingborg Symphony and the Norrlands Opera Orchestra.


Born and raised in New York City, Schiffman began studying cello at age five. Piano and composition studies followed shortly afterwards. Upon graduating with honours from Yale where he was Music Director of the Yale Bach Society Orchestra & Chorus, Schiffman attended the Aspen Summer Music Festival as a conducting fellow. He subsequently received a master's degree from Juilliard, where he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller. In 2001, Schiffman made his professional conducting debut with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. His success there led to several return engagements as well as concerts with the National Symphony, Eugene Symphony, and Richmond Symphony orchestras. Schiffman moved to Paris in 2003 to study composition with Narcis Bonet as a Fulbright scholar.


An active composer himself, Schiffman has a particularly close affinity to new music. He has conducted premieres by a number of prominent composers including a European premiere of Wolfgang Rihm Dritter Doppelgesang with the Orchestre National de France. He also conducted the world premiere performance of Stravinsky's last work, entitled, Four Preludes and Fugues transcribed from The Well-Tempered Clavier.

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Kenneth Kiesler

Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting at University of Michigan since 1995, Kenneth Kiesler is founder and director of the Conductors Retreat at Medomak and Conductor Laureate of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra where, as Music Director from 1980 to 2000, he founded the Illinois Symphony Chorus and Illinois Chamber Orchestra, led debuts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and won several awards.  Since the summer of 2006, at the invitation of Music Director Pinchas Zukerman, he has been Director of the Conductors Programme of Canada's National Arts Centre. In 2007, he was named Director of the Vendome International Academy of Orchestral Conducting in France. Kiesler also leads masterclasses and courses for the Philharmonisches Kammer Orchester Berlin and Deutsches Musikrat in Germany.  His students have won major international competitions such as the Maazel/Vilar and Nicolai Malko Competitions, and hold positions with major orchestras, opera companies, and music schools. Kiesler is a member of the visiting artist faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and has led many master classes for the ASOL and Conductors’ Guild, at Oxford University and Royal Academy of Music in London. 

He was the recipient of the 1988 Helen M. Thompson Award, presented by the American Symphony Orchestra League to the outstanding American Music Director under the age of 35.  He was an honored participant in the Leonard Bernstein American Conductors Program and conducted the Ensemble Intercontemporain in sessions with Pierre Boulez at Carnegie Hall.  At the 1986 Stokowski Competition, he was awarded the Silver Medal by Maurice Abravanel, and special recognition for best performance of Appalachian Spring, by Morton Gould. 

Kiesler has conducted National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, the Chicago Symphony, L'Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the orchestras of Utah, Detroit, New Jersey, Florida, Indianapolis, Memphis, San Diego, Albany, Virginia, Omaha, Fresno, Long Beach, Long Island, Portland, Jerusalem, Haifa, Osaka, Puerto Rico, Daejeon and Pusan in Korea, the New Symphony Orchestra in Bulgaria, Hang Zhou in China, and at Meadowbrook, Skaneateles, Sewanee, Breckenridge, and Aspen.  His operatic conducting includes Bright Sheng’s The Silver River in Singapore, and Britten's Peter Grimes and Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. His many dance performances include Appalachian Spring with Martha Graham, and Cinderella with the Indianapolis Ballet.

Kiesler's performances are heard on a dozen recordings on the Naxos and Equilibrium labels, with the BBC in London, Third Angle, the University Symphony Orchestra and the University Opera Theatre. He has led premieres by Evan Chambers, Steven Stucky, Gunther Schuller, Leslie Bassett, Ben Johnston, Aharon Harlap, Gabriela Lena Frank, Steven Rush and Paul Brantley.  He conducted the first performance since 1925 of Gershwin's original jazz-band score of Rhapsody in Blue, the U.S. premiere of Mendelssohn's Third Piano Concerto, the world premiere of James P. Johnson's The Dreamy Kid and the first performance since 1940 of Johnson's blues opera, De Organizer.

His teachers include Carlo Maria Giulini, Fiora Contino, Julius Herford, Erich Leinsdorf, John Nelson, and James Wimer. He is included in Jeannine Wagar's book, Conductors in Conversation: Fifteen Contemporary Conductors Discuss Their Lives and Profession, andShostakovich Reconsidered by Allan Ho. Early in his career he was Assistant Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony, Music Director of the South Bend Symphony and Principal Conductor of the Congress of Strings and the Saint Cecilia Orchestra where his “Tribute to Shostakovich” and national broadcasts brought widespread acclaim.  Kenneth Kiesler is a trained wilderness guide and occasionally leads expeditions in the wilderness areas of Maine.

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