Firmly established as one of today's leading exponents of contemporary music, Stefan Asbury is in increasing demand as a guest conductor with major orchestras, ensembles and festivals worldwide. He holds the post of Music Director of Remix Ensemble Casa da Musica Porto, Portugal, a contemporary ensemble founded under the auspices of Porto 2001 with whom, over the past four seasons, he has commissioned new works and broadened their programming with an innovative mix of jazz, film and music theatre. Since 1995 he has been on the faculty of the Tanglewood Music Center and from 1999 - 2002 held the position of Associate Director of New Music Activities.
Recent highlights include a concert of music by Louis Andriessen at the Berlin Festival with musikFabrik, his debut at Wien Modern Festival with the Radio Symphonie Orchester Wien and langforum Wien (with whom he conducted Wolfgang Rihm’s Jagden und Formen), appearances with SWR Stuttgart both at the Schwetzingen Festival and for a TV broadcast of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra and his return to the Ultima Festival for the third consecutive year with Norwegian Radio. He opened a film music festival of the Dutch Film Institute in the Concertgebouw Hall, Amsterdam with ASKO in April 2003 conducting the Netherlands premiere of an Alfred Schnittke's accompaniment to a silent film and returned to London Sinfonietta to open the South Bank's Ether Festival in association with Warp Records. Future engagements include return performances with WDR Cologne and concerts with NDR Hannover, SWR-Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg (which includes music by Schreker, Schoenberg and Dallapiccola) and RIAS Kammerchor in the Berlin Philharmonie. Working regularly with Ensemble Modern, recent concerts have included the Venice Biennale, a residency at Cité de la Musique in Paris and a Kirchentag concert at the Berlin Philharmonie and he conducts Rihm Jagden und Formen in Baden-Baden in October 2003.
Stefan Asbury has conducted opera and ballet with Opera de Lyon and productions with the Netherlands Dance Theatre and Opera North, UK. He is a recipient of the 1994 BMW Music Theatre Prize for his conducting of the premiere of Freeze by Rob Zuidam in the Munich Biennale and Holland Festival, a composer whose new opera Rage d’amours he conducted at Tanglewood in 2003. Productions include the premiere of Melodias Estranhas by António Chagas Rosa in Porto and Rotterdam and a new production of Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Punch and Judy. The 2002/03 season ended with a concert performance of Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert with NDR Hamburg and future plans include the world premieres of Johannes Maria Staud's Berenice at Munich Biennale and the Berlin Festival in 2004 and Jan Van Vlijmen's Thyeste with La Monnaie in Brussels and the Dutch Touring Opera in 2005. He will also conduct Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream in Tanglewood in Summer 2004.
His recent CD of music by Jonathan Harvey with the Ensemble Intercontemporain was awarded a Monde de la Musique CHOC award and his discography includes music by Isang Yun with Deutsches Symphonie Orchester, Berlin, works by Elliott Carter with Ensemble Sospeso, portrait discs of Philip Cashian with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Rebecca Saunders with musikFabrik. His recording of Grisey Les Espaces Acoustiques with the orchestra of WDR Cologne and Asko Ensemble is scheduled for future release by Kairos.
Stefan Asbury gained scholarships to Oxford University, the Royal College of Music and, in 1990, the Tanglewood Music Center as a recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship. In addition to his role at Tanglewood he has worked with young musicians in Australia, as Director of the 2000 Easter Course for Australian Youth Music in Canberra, and Switzerland, conducting a joint orchestra from Swiss conservatoires for the Archipel festival in Geneva. He has also conducted New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami. This season he will conduct students from the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music, Odense and Royal Academy, Copenhagen as part of their Music Harvest festival, and he returns to conduct in a project at Geneva Conservatoire early in 2005.
