Leonard Slatkin

Leonard Slatkin has long stood out as a central presence in American orchestral life, leading many of the nation’s foremost ensembles across an extensive career. He is especially recognized for his advocacy of American, Russian, and British repertoire, and he has been unusually outspoken among U.S. conductors in promoting domestic works.

Born in Los Angeles on September 1, 1944, Slatkin grew up in a Ukrainian Jewish household originally surnamed Zlotkin; his brother Frederick, a cellist, has retained that spelling in his own professional work. His father, Felix, composed and conducted for films while helping establish the Hollywood String Quartet, and his mother, Eleanor, served as the ensemble’s cellist. Slatkin received a thorough musical grounding that was notably confined to American institutions, studying at Indiana University’s music school, Los Angeles City College, and the Juilliard School in New York under St. Louis Symphony music director Walter Susskind and Jean Morel.

He began his conducting career as assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, rising through successive positions until his appointment as the orchestra’s music director in 1979. He held that post for seventeen years, producing an extensive discography for Vox, EMI, and especially RCA that included complete cycles of the Elgar and Vaughan Williams symphonies. These releases earned numerous Grammy nominations, of which Slatkin has secured six. In 1985 he directed the St. Louis Symphony in the first compact-disc recording of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. From 1992 he also oversaw the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Music Festival, and in 1996 he departed St. Louis for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, where he worked to revive the ensemble’s commitment to American music.

Slatkin relocated to London in 2000 as conductor of the BBC Philharmonic while also serving as principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic; throughout this period he maintained U.S. engagements with the Hollywood Bowl, the Nashville Symphony, and the Pittsburgh Symphony as principal guest conductor. The principal post of his later years has been music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, where he guided the ensemble through labor disputes and municipal bankruptcy. He relinquished the title in 2018 yet continues as music director laureate, extending a series of Naxos recordings with the orchestra. In 2019 he led the Detroit Symphony in a Naxos release of Copland ballet music that featured the seldom-heard early score Grohg and received a Grammy nomination. Between 2011 and 2017 he served as music director of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France. Slatkin is also active as a composer and has written the book Conducting Business. He was awarded the U.S. National Medal of the Arts in 2003.