Karoline Jacob
kj(at)karstenwitt.com
+49 30 214 594-221
Yan Dribinsky
yd(at)karstenwitt.com
+49 30 214 594-230
General Management (except USA; Opera EU: with Sorek Artists)
American-Israeli conductor Steven Sloane is a visionary whose creative concepts and outstanding artistic merits have garnered respect in artistic circles, as well as in the realm of cultural politics. A student of Eugene Ormandy, Franco Ferrara and Gary Bertini, he quickly set off for an international career and served as Music Director of the Spoleto Festival USA, of Opera North in Leeds, of the American Composers Orchestra, as Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, as well as Artistic Director of the Cultural Capital of Europe Ruhr.2010.
Since 1994, Steven Sloane has been the General Music Director of the Bochum Symphony, which he transformed into one of Germany’s leading orchestras. He was instrumental in the building and realization of the orchestra’s own music centre, the Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr, and he inaugurated the hall in 2016 to international acclaim. Other extraordinary successes of his work with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra include the exceptional production of Zimmermann's Die Soldaten at the Ruhrtriennale (2006) and at the New York Lincoln Center Festival (2008), the celebrated Mahler/Ives cycle at the Philharmonie Essen, and numerous CD projects, including the complete recording of the orchestral works of Joseph Marx.
In September 2020, Steven Sloane also took up his new post as Music Director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, introducing several new concert series and formats in his first season. The highlight will be the annual Psalm Festival, whose program will highlight the musical diversity of Judaism, Islam and Christianity in their common tradition. At the end of the season he will conduct several concerts of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Germany, including a joint performance of Gustav Mahler's 2nd Symphony with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra in the Jahrhunderthalle, with which he will bid farewell from Bochum as GMD. He will remain associated with the Bochum Symphony Orchestra as Honorary Conductor with productions such as Wagner's Ring Tetralogy directed by Keith Warner, which is scheduled to start in spring 2021.
Steven Sloane is a frequent guest with prestigious orchestras, including London Philharmonic Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Philharmonia Orchestra London, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Since 2018, Steven Sloane has been Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Advisor at Malmö Opera, where he is conducting a new production of Verdi's Falstaff in the current season. As a sought-after opera conductor, he has been successful at houses such as the Royal Opera House London (Le Nozze di Figaro), the L.A. Opera (Dido and Aeneas/Duke Bluebeard's Castle), San Francisco Opera (Wallace: Bonesetter's Daughter), Royal Opera Copenhagen (Madama Butterfly), Grand Théâtre de Genève (Britten: A Midsummer Night's Dream), Houston Grand Opera (Die Sache Makropulos, Zauberflöte), Welsh National Opera (Iphigénie en Tauride), Deutsche Oper Berlin (Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen) and Stuttgart Opera (Macbeth) as well as at festivals in Hong Kong (Salome), Santa Fe (Káťa Kabanová), Edinburgh (Genoveva), Salzburg (Feldman: Neither) and New York (Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole at the NY City Opera). His most recent opera successes include the outstanding Berlin premiere of Aribert Reimann's Medea at the Komische Oper, Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur at the Oper Frankfurt, Der Fliegende Holländer and Tosca in Malmö and Salome at the Spoleto Festival USA.
Education and promoting young musicians have always been of great importance to Steven Sloane. He has regularly conducted youth orchestras such as Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Bundesjugendorchester and Young Israel Philharmonic, and since 2013 has served as professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he has founded the International Conducting Academy Berlin.
Season 2020/21
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Under the direction of Steven Sloane, the Latvian State Choir sang and Bochum Symphony Orchestra played with solemn serenity appropriate to the occasion, with a nearly ominous air, as though each individual groaned under the weight of such musical responsibility. Musically, it was less meditative than tremulous, piercing, reproachful.
Peter Jungblut, BR Klassik, 6 September 2019 (Ruhrtriennale, Ligeti Requiem)
The Latvian State Choir and Bochum Symphony Orchestra under Steven Sloane are startingly delicate in their approach to this music, which, in the surehandedness and musicality of their interpretation, also gets at something unyielding that touches the audience with an almost foreboding quality. A truly substantial evening.
Andreas Falentin, Die Deutsche Bühne, 6 September 2019 (Ruhrtriennale, Ligeti Requiem)
The opera and museum orchestra inevitably played an authoritative role once again in the inspiring experience of the (second) revival of this opera. Steven Sloane stood at the podium, with a good view on his former job as first conductor (nearly thirty years ago). With great oversight and passion, he led his orchestra through the demands of the dense task, making for delicate strings and dense, powerful brass.
Frankfurter Neue Presse, Matthias Gerhart, 29/5/2018 (Adriana Lecouvreur, Oper Frankfurt)
Mahler's eighty-minute final symphony is a work of haunting beauty. In Sloane´s sensitive and expressive interpretation as conductor, the marvel of timbres, polyphony, and symphonic structures was developed to perfection. And the canon of moods – drama and conflict, grief and tenderness – was kept in remarkable balance. […]Stunning! Given this bold performance, one nearly forgot that the exquisite graciousness with which the evening began.
Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Jürgen Boebers-Süßmann, 12/3/2018
The house orchestra, under guest conductor Steven Sloane, executes the score’s broad palette of textures with impressive attention to nuance and balance, from gongs that crash in the outer aisles, to detuned, mocking flutes, to squealing brass. It may not always be a pleasant journey, but Reimann’s Medea offers the listener no escape.
Financial Times, Rebecca Schmid, 23/5/2017
Superb too, was the way conductor Steven Sloane co-ordinated with the soloists, making the seemingly incompatible compatible for two full hours, right from the very first notes.
Tagesspiegel, Frederik Hanssen, 23/5/2017
The real shock of Medea comes from Reimann’s orchestra. As in his Shakespeare opera Lear (…), all of the sound’s violence comes from the orchestral pit, which was released into the room with an incredible presence by Steven Sloane and the house orchestra – fierce, seething, wildly faltering string and brass figures, and raw and cracked percussion agglomerations. This was listening as a challenge and a dangerous exercise.
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wolfgang Schreiber, 25/5/2017
Prégardien, Sloane and the Bochum Symphony are wonderfully matched. They bring a rare, dreamlike quality and sense of other-worldliness to Mahler‘s visions of love and war, life and death. Ghostly woodwind solos and distant trumpet calls make chamber music with Prégardien’s steady but supple lines of long breathed melody. Sloane’s conducting offers bracing support in its alertness to the underlying dance rhythms of so many of these setting.
BBC Music Magazine, Hilary Finch, 3/2014 “recording of the month”
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the baton of Steven Sloane let the elements of dreams and the spicy fundamentals, of the illustrious and the ridiculous of everyday life become a colourful arc of sound – and made it clear at every moment that Britten’s sound worlds live on melodic and lyrical inspiration.
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Rolf Urs Ringger, 25/11/2015
Steven Sloane moves through Britten’s music like a fish in the waters of a fresh, bubbly and crystal clear source. Immaculate entries from each musician, a rounded and delicate sound, orchestral flow, airy and brisk rhythms.
LE TEMPS, Sylvie Bonier, 21/11/2015
The conductor, Steven Sloane, drew pulsing, feisty and textured playing from the orchestra.
New York Times, Anthony Tommasini, 18/9/2013
Steven Sloane, who already led the baroque orchestra to delicate transparence, unleashed not only the abundance of colours but also the entire force of Bartók’s music.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gerhard Schroth, 31/5/2013
Steven Sloane excelled at bringing out the mockery Prokofiev’s music makes of the theatre of illusion, with sharp contrasts and agility. This made listening to the singers an even greater pleasure.
Opernwelt, Albrecht Thiemann, February 2013
R. WAGNER | Prelude to Parsifal |
N. SHERIFF | 'Akedah Die Opferung Isaaks' in memory of Itzhak Rabin |
S. ODEH-TAMIMI | Halat Hissar - Belagerungszustand |
R. STRAUSS | Death and Transfiguration Op.24 |
E. SCHULHOFF | Symphony No.2 |
A. ZEMLINSKY | Symphonic Songs Op.20 |
E. W. KORNGOLD | Symphonic Serenade Op.39 |
G. LIGETI | Lux aeterna |
O. MESSIAEN | Lascension quatre meditations |
R. WAGNER | Parsifal (3rd Act) |
J. HAYDN | Symphony No.22 in E flat major 'The Philosopher' |
F. ZAPPA | The Adventures of Greggery Peccary |
H. BERLIOZ | Symphonie fantastique |
R. STRAUSS | Metamorphosen |
K. PENDERECKI | Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima |
L. v. BEETHOVEN | Symphony No.3 in E flat major Op.55 'Eroica' |
L. BERNSTEIN | Symphony No.2 'The Age of Anxiety' for piano and orchestra |
J. CORIGLIANO | Red Violin Concerto |
J. ADAMS | Harmonielehre |
J. HAYDN | Symphony No.59 |
G. LIGETI | San Francisco Polyphony |
B. BARTÓK | Duke Bluebeard's Castle |
T. TAKEMITSU | I hear the water dreaming |
R. SCHUMANN | Symphony No.3 'Rhenish' |
C. DEBUSSY | La Mer |
A. BERG | Wozzeck, 3rd Act, Scene 4 and 5 |
F. SCHREKER | Prelude to a drama |
A. WEBERN | Five pieces for orchestra Op.10 |
R. STRAUSS | Suite from 'Der Rosenkavalier' |
I. STRAVINSKY | Rite of Spring |
Projects at Ruhrtriennale | |
B. A. ZIMMERMANN | Die Soldaten, stage direction David Pountney |
H. W. HENZE | Giesela! (world premiere) |
H. GOEBBELS | Surrogate Cities |
Cycle "Mahler meets Ives" - Excerpts | |
C. IVES | Three Places in New England |
G. MAHLER | Symphony No.5 in C sharp minor |
C. IVES | Fireman's Parade on Main Street |
C. IVES | Symphony No.3 'The Camp Meeting' |
G. MAHLER | Symphony No.1 in D major 'Titan' |
G. MAHLER | Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (arr. Schoenberg 1920) |
C. IVES | Fünf Lieder (arr. John Adams) |
G. MAHLER | Symphony No.4 |
G. MAHLER | Adagio from Symphony No.10 |
G. MAHLER | Kindertotenlieder |
C. IVES | Symphony No.4 |
Element downloaden | |
Operatic Repertoire | |
J. ADAMS | Nixon in China |
S. BARBER | Anthony and Cleopatra |
B. BARTÓK | Bluebeards Castle* |
A. BERG | Wozzeck |
L. v. BEETHOVEN | Fidelio |
G. BIZET | Carmen |
The Pearl Fishers | |
B. BRITTEN | Midsummer Nights Dream |
The Rape of Lucretia | |
Albert Herring | |
F. CILEA | Adriana Lecouvreur |
R. DE RAAF | Waiting for Miss Monroe |
W. GLUCK | Iphigénie en Tauride* |
E. GOLDENTHAL | Grendel |
E. HUMPERDINCK | Hansel and Gretel |
L. JANÁ?EK | Katja Kabanova* |
Jenufa* | |
Ossud | |
The Cunning Little Vixen* | |
The Makropoulos Case | |
D. LANG | Prisoner of State |
R. LEONCAVALLO | Pagliacci |
P. MASCAGNI | Cavalleria rusticana* |
C. MONTEVERDI | LOrfeo |
W. A. MOZART | Cosi fan tutte* |
La finta gardiniera | |
La clemenza di Tito | |
The Magic Flute | |
Le nozze di Figaro* | |
M. MUSSORGSKY | Boris Godunov |
J. OFFENBACH | The Tales of Hoffmann |
G. B. PERGOLESI | La serva padrona |
S. PROKOFIEV | The Love for Three Oranges* |
G. PUCCINI | Il Trittico* |
Tosca* | |
Turandot | |
La Bohème | |
Madama Butterfly* | |
H. PURCELL | Dido and Aeneas* |
A. REIMANN | Medea |
G. ROSSINI | Il barbiere di Siviglia |
D. SHOSTAKOVICH | Moscow Cheryomushki |
R. STRAUSS | Salome* |
Der Rosenkavalier | |
R. SCHUMANN | Genoveva |
P. TCHAIKOVSKY | Eugen Onegin |
M. A. TURNAGE | Anna Nicole |
G. VERDI | La Traviata* |
Un ballo in maschera | |
Falstaff* | |
Rigoletto* | |
Macbeth | |
Simone Boccanegra | |
R. WAGNER | Tristan und Isolde* |
Lohengrin* | |
The Flying Dutchman | |
Parsifal* | |
S. WALLACE | The Bonesetters Daughter |
K. WEILL | Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny |
The Threepenny Opera | |
The Eternal Road | |
The Seven Deadly Sins | |
B. A. ZIMMERMANN | Die Soldaten |
*possible without pre-rehearsal | |
more... less / top |
Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (live recording by Dutch National Opera)
Challenge Classics CC 72685, 2015
Antje Weithaas (violin), Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
Avi LC 15080, 2013
Christoph Prégardien (tenor), Bochum Symphony Orchestra
CPO 777 675-2, 2013BBC Recording of the Month
Herbert Grönemeyer, Bochum Symphony Orchestra
EMI 5099962773928, 2010
Claudia Barainsky (soprano) et al., Bochum Symphony Orchestra
Director: David Pountney
DORO/RuhrTriennale DVD-9, 2006
Rebecca Nelsen, Ray M. Wade Jr., William Dazeley, E. Mark Murphy, Piotr Prochera
Bochum Symphony Orchestra
CPO 777545-2, 2011
Thomas Oliemans (baritone), Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
MD&G Records B003A6OHF0, 2010
Dimitri Vassilakis (piano), Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet), Bochum Symphony Orchestra
Cybele Records, ISBN 978-3-937794-10-5, 2010
Christiane Oelze (soprano), Antje Weithaas (violin), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Capriccio 1040775, 2009
Niklas Eppinger (cello), Bochum Symphony Orchestra
aulos AUL 66 148, 2007
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Capriccio, CD 71096, 2006
Sophie Koch (mezzo), Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Capriccio, CD 67076, 2004
David Lively (piano), Bochum Symphony Orchestra
ASV, CD DCA 1174, 2004
Bochum Symphony Orchestra
ASV, CD DCA 1158, 2003
Angela Maria Blasi (soprano), Stella Doufexis (mezzo), Bochum Symphony Orchestra
ASV, CD DCA 1164, 2003Nominated for the Grammy
Bochum Symphony Orchestra
ASV, CD DCA 1137, 2003
Michael Rische (piano), WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne
Arte Nova Classics, B00005V4OS, 2002
Steven Sloane will take up the position of Music Director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at the beginning of the 2020/21 season. From October 2019 he will be Music Director Designate, leading the orchestra in three symphony concerts and begin with artistic planning. Karsten Witt took this appointment as an opportunity to take a look into the future – as well as the past....
The Israeli composer and conductor Noam Sheriff shaped the music life of Israel more than almost any other person. He died on 25th August at the age of 83. Shortly before the burial in Tel Aviv, the conductor Steven Sloane spoke to Karsten Witt about his memories of the great artist and mentor to following generations of Israeli conductors for many decades....
This October, the Bochumer Symphoniker and their long-standing Music Director Steven Sloane celebrated a milestone with the opening of their long-awaited new home, the Anneliese Brost Musikforum Ruhr....
After the successful first round in the academic year 2014/15, young conductors can again apply for an internationally unique programme at Berlin’s University of the Arts (UdK): The International Conducting Academy Berlin (ICAB), conceived and directed by Steven Sloane, offers, alongside a two-year master's degree programme, a one-year postgraduate course, specifically tailored to the individual needs of the participants. It offers conductors with first work experience, who are already beyond the master’s level, a very focused way to improve upon their capabilities, benefitting from a variety of collaborations with orchestras and opera houses in Berlin and other German cities....