Stefan Asbury

A regular guest with leading orchestras worldwide, Stefan Asbury’s 2022/23 season starts with visits to the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition, the Indianapolis and Tulsa Symphony orchestras, followed by engagements with the Norrköpings Symfoniorkester, Ensemble Modern, the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra.

Recent seasons saw Stefan returning to and debuting with several orchestras across the world, including the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester, Copenhagen Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Seattle and Vancouver Symphony orchestras, Ensemble Resonanz in Hamburg, Pacific Philharmonia Tokyo, Auckland Philharmonia and China National Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig as part of Beethovenfest Bonn and Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao during Bilbao’s Musika-Musica 2019 festival.

Asbury has particularly strong relationships with many living composers including Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Unsuk Chin and Mark-Anthony Turnage. In 2015/16, he conducted the world premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Organ Concert at the Musikverein in Vienna. In the 2014/15 season he conducted the world premiere of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Piano Concerto with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and also gave the US premiere with Aimard and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Following the sad passing of Oliver Knussen, a very close mentor, Stefan conducted his last completed composition with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in November 2018.

As a recording artist, Stefan’s album with works by Jonathan Harvey was awarded a Monde de la Musique CHOC award, and his complete cycle of Gerard Grisey’s Les Espaces Accoustiques with WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln won a Deutschen Schallplattenkritik award.

In October 2013 he conducted the world premiere of Michael Jarell’s Siegfried Nocturne at the Wagner Geneva Festival. Other opera highlights include Porgy and Bess at the Spoleto Festival, John Adams’ A Flowering Tree for the Perth International Arts Festival, Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz for the Wiener Festwochen, Britten’s Owen Wingrave with Tapiola Sinfonietta and Knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are at Tanglewood. He also collaborated with Copenhagen Phil and the Danish Dance Theatre on a new production of The Firebird, the Mark Morris Dance Group in productions of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts with performances at the Lincoln Center in New York, London’s Barbican and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, amongst other venues.

Since 1995 Stefan Asbury has served on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center and has held the Sana H. Sabbagh Master Teacher Chair on the Conducting Faculty since 2005. In addition to his regular summer teaching he has given masterclasses at the Hochschule der Kunste (Zürich), Venice and Geneva Conservatoires, and with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Inside the TMC.

Stefan Asbury, photo: Eric Richmond