Music Director Steven Larsen has been Music Director of the Rockford Symphony Orchestra for 30 years and will be officially retiring in December of 2021. During his tenure the orchestra has flourished and grown to become the third largest symphony orchestra in Illinois. His energetic leadership earned two “Orchestra of the Year” awards to the Rockford Symphony Orchestra and three “Conductor of the Year” awards for himself, the most recent in 2016. Critics have praised his ease with all ranges of musical styles and periods, his sense of line and dramatic tension, and his ability to bring new life to familiar music. Audiences respond warmly to his informal podium style and enjoy his enthusiastic desire to communicate his love for music. Larsen is a native of Chicago, where he attended the American Conservatory of Music, receiving a degree in music theory and composition. As his interests in conducting grew, he auditioned for the graduate program at Northwestern University, earning an assistantship and leading to studies with Margaret Hillis and Bernard Rubenstein. He received that school’s first Master of Music in orchestral conducting in 1976. In 1979 he was the only American to be awarded a fellowship in the prestigious Netherlands Broadcasting Company Conductors Course, leading to continued studies with the late Russian conductor Kyrill Kondrashin. In 1981 he was invited to participate in the first Conductors Institute, held in Morgantown, West Virginia, as a conducting fellow. A significant portion of his career has been devoted to opera. For 13 years, he was resident conductor and Artistic Administrator of Chicago Opera Theater, where he also produced the New Opera Workshop. He has guest conducted for opera companies in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Honolulu, Cleveland, Westchester (NY), and Dayton (OH), returning to Dayton for a season as Interim General Director. For three years he was Principal Conductor for Opera Theater of San Antonio. His many symphonic guest conducting engagements include the State Orchestra of Mexico; the Camerata Polifonica Siciliana in Catania, Italy; the Milwaukee Symphony, Grant Park Symphony and Tulsa Philharmonic, as well as leading several children’s concerts with the Chicago Symphony. In 2012 he traveled to Prague to conduct the Hradec Králové Philharmonic. He has received the “Star of Excellence” Award from the Mendelssohn Performing Arts Center, the “Mayor’s Arts Award for Distinguished Service by an Individual”, and the “Distinguished Service” Award from the Rockford Park District. In May of 2021, Larsen was honored as the City of Rockford Distinguished Artist of the Year from the Rockford Area Arts Council.
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