Kenneth Kiesler

Professor of Music and Director of University Orchestras

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Bio

Kenneth Kiesler, Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting, is a GRAMMY nominee (2014) and recipient of the American Prize in Conducting (2011). In 2024, he was honored to be selected as a winner of The American Prize National Arts Award “honoring a very few artists whose philosophy and exceptional professional accomplishments are evidence of sustained artistic excellence over an extended period of time.” He holds the lifetime position of Conductor Laureate of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, where – as its music director from 1980 to 2000 and music advisor from 2010 to 2012 – he led debuts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, founded the Illinois Symphony Chorus and Illinois Chamber Orchestra, and won several state and national awards. He is the founder of the ten-year commissioning initiative, Michigan Orchestra Repertoire for Equity (MORE), and has led the premieres of its first five commissions, by James Lee III, Carlos Simon, Vincent Gardner, Nkeiru Okoye, and Adolphus Hailstork. He will lead the 6th premiere, by Ozie Cargile, in March of 2026.

In May of 2025, Kiesler led the USO’s highly successful 5-concert tour of South Africa and return performance at Carnegie Hall, with soloists Karen Slack, Goitsemang Lehobye, and Daniel Washington. On the NPR show 1A, Joseph Horowitz commented, “The performances I heard of the Negro Folk Symphony in South Africa were better than any of the commercial recordings…the orchestra was thrilling. These highly skilled pre-professional musicians comprise one of the least jaded, most engaged symphonic ensembles I’ve ever come across.” Speaking about the history of cultural diplomacy undertaken by the United States, Horowitz concluded, “The symphony orchestra tour led by Kenneth Kiesler showered credit on the University and its young musicians. It also, I would suggest, performed a service to the Nation.”

Kiesler’s premiere recording of Harlem composer James P. Johnson’s operas De Organizer and The Dreamy Kid, with the University Symphony Orchestra and U-M Opera Theatre, won a coveted place among the New York Times Best Classical Albums of 2023. The NY Times said, “The interpretive insights on both new recordings are so strong, they stand alongside other recent triumphs in the American repertoire.”

Kiesler’s performances are heard on more than a dozen recordings on the Naxos, Dorian Sono Luminus, and Equilibrium labels with the BBC in London, Third Angle new music ensemble, University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, and University Opera Theatre. The landmark three-CD world premiere recording of Milhaud’s L’Orestie d’Eschyle was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2014.

Of the Milhaud recording:

Fanfare wrote, “I cannot say enough about the high quality of this music or the committed performance given by conductor Kiesler and the University of Michigan chorus and orchestra. This will surely be one of the outstanding operatic recordings of our time.”

“Conductor Kenneth Kiesler cannot be praised too extravagantly for his expert leadership of the batteries of voices and instruments employed in this performance…Maestro Kiesler presides over this performance as though it were the summation of his life’s work.” – Voix des Arts

“It stands as one of the most memorable recordings of 2014.” – The Examiner

“…this is a great performance of a great work. The recording quality is consistently fine; and over and above that is the power and intensity of all the musicians taking part, clearly under Kiesler’s inspiring direction.” – International Record Review

“The performance of this gigantic work deserves nothing but praise. The chorus and orchestra perform excellently under Kenneth Kiesler.” – American Record Guide

In 2022, Kiesler led the UMS presentation of Wynton Marsalis’ monumental All Rise with Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the University Symphony Orchestra, U-M Choirs, and soloists. He will lead the USO and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra together again in February of 2026, this time in the first performance of a major new symphony by Wynton Marsalis. He has conducted the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center, the Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Utah Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Queensland Symphony in Australia, the Chamber Orchestra of Chile, Chamber Orchestra of Paris, New York Philharmonic principal players at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and the symphony orchestras of Jerusalem, Haifa, Osaka, Puerto Rico, Daejeon and Pusan in Korea, Sofia in Bulgaria, Hang Zhou in China, OSUSP in Sao Paulo, The International Orchestra of the Arts in Mexico City, the Florida, Indianapolis, Memphis, San Diego, Albany, Virginia, Omaha, Fresno, Long Beach, Long Island, Portland orchestras, and at the Atlantic, Music in the Alps, Meadowbrook, Skaneateles, Sewanee, Breckenridge, and Aspen music festivals.

Of his 2008 debut with Chamber Orchestra of Paris, critic Roger Bouchard stated: “There do exist great American conductors, and Kiesler is one of them! Standing on behalf of the music he serves, he conducts from memory with unaffected gestures both precise and passionate. Nothing is unnecessary in his conducting, yet everything is there. Very beautiful work!”

Kiesler has performed with many renowned artists, such as violinists Joshua Bell, Kyoko Takezawa, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmar Olivera, Joseph Silverstein, Anne Akiko Meyers, Jaime Laredo, and Leonidos Kavakos; pianists Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Malcolm Frager, Yefim Bronfman, Lorin Hollander, Leon Fleisher, Byron Janis, Joseph Kalichstein, Grant Johannesen, and Peter Serkin; singers Audra MacDonald, Measha Brueggergosman, William Warfield, Christine Brewer, George Shirley, Sylvia McNair, Jubilant Sykes, Robert Merrill and Martina Arroyo; cellists Lynn Harrell, Sharon Robinson, Leslie Parnas, Astrid Schween, and Zuill Bailey; Guitarists Sharon Robinson and Eliot Fisk; hornist Hermann Baumann, and clarinetists Richard Stoltzman and David Schiffrin.

Kiesler has also enjoyed numerous performances with his distinguished SMTD colleagues, including flutist Amy Porter; oboist Nancy King; clarinetist Daniel Gilbert; bassoonist Jeffrey Lyman; horn player Adam Unsworth; trumpeter William Campbell; tubist Fritz Kaenzig; violinists David Halen, Danielle Belen,Yehonatan Berick, Fabiola Kim, and Aaron Berofsky; violist Yizhak Schotten; cellists Anthony Elliott and Erling Blöndal Bengtsson; singers Carmen Pelton, George Shirley, Daniel Washington, Melody Racine, Freda Herseth, Lorna Haywood, Rosemary Russel, Martha Shiel, Leslie Guinn, and Stephen West; percussionists Douglas Perkins, Ian Antonio, and Joseph Gramley: and pianists John Ellis, Christopher Harding, Arthur Greene, Logan Skelton, Amy I-Lin Cheng, and Anton Nel.

Kiesler is one of the most sought-after and highly regarded teachers and mentors of conductors worldwide. At the invitation of music director Pinchas Zukerman, he served for 8 years as the director of the Conductors Programme of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. For five years, he was director of the Vendome International Academy of Orchestral Conducting in France. Kiesler was director of Conducting Programs of International Masterclasses Berlin, and served for eight years as Visiting Artist and Music Advisor to the orchestras of the Manhattan School of Music. He has frequently been a Visiting Artist at the Royal Academy of Music in London and has led many master classes and courses for the League of American Orchestras, the Conductors’ Guild, the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Berlin, and the Deutsches Musikrat in Germany; annually at the Waterville Valley Music Center in New Hampshire; at Oxford University; and in Moscow, Berlin, Leipzig, Vilnius, London, Rome, São Paulo, New York, and for the Ministry of Culture in Mexico City. He is the founder and director of the renowned and intensive summer program, Conductors Retreat at Medomak, now in its 30th year.

Kiesler’s students have won many of the world’s major international competitions, such as the Donatella Flick-London Symphony Orchestra, Maazel/Vilar, Eduardo Mata, and Nicolai Malko Competitions, and hold positions with major orchestras, opera companies, and music schools.

His frequent opera conducting has included Bright Sheng’s The Silver River in Singapore; Britten’s Peter Grimes and Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Madama Butterfly with the Chattanooga Opera, Carmina Burana at Syracuse Opera; and operas of Ravel, Stravinsky, Menotti, Puccini, Verdi, and Mozart. His dance performances include Appalachian Spring with Martha Graham, Carmina Burana with the Contemporary Dance Company of Havana, and Cinderella with the Indianapolis Ballet.

Kiesler has led premieres by Evan Chambers, Steven Stucky, Gunther Schuller, Leslie Bassett, Ben Johnston, Aharon Harlap, Gabriela Lena Frank, Kristin Kuster, Steven Rush, and Paul Brantley. At the age of 19, he conducted the first performance since 1925 of Gershwin’s original jazz-band score of Rhapsody in Blue. At Michigan, he conducted the U.S. premiere of Mendelssohn’s Third Piano Concerto, the world premiere of James P. Johnson’s The Dreamy Kid, and the first performance since 1940 of Johnson’s blues opera, De Organizer. He recently conducted the world premieres and American premieres of several works by Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940).

His recording of Kaprálová’s orchestral works, Waving Farewell, received high praise from numerous publications, including Prosinec & Harmonie (Czech Republic):

“The University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Kenneth Kiesler, delivers an absolutely professional performance on this CD… All of the musicians are technically superb, and their ensemble playing is flawless. Kenneth Kiesler not only confidently ‘masters’ his performers but also works masterfully with orchestral colors, which is particularly appreciated in places where Kaprálová drew inspiration from musical impressionism.”

Early in his career, Kiesler’s positions included Assistant Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony, Music Director of the South Bend Symphony, and Principal Conductor of the Congress of Strings and the Saint Cecilia Orchestra – where his “Tribute to Shostakovich” and national broadcasts brought widespread acclaim.

Kiesler was the recipient of the 1988 Helen M. Thompson Award, presented by the American Symphony Orchestra League to the outstanding American music director under the age of 35, and the Governor’s Arts Award (Illinois). He was one of three selected for the Leonard Bernstein American Conductors Program with the National Symphony Orchestra, and conducted the Ensemble Intercontemporain in masterclass sessions led by Pierre Boulez for the centenary of Carnegie Hall. At the 1986 Stokowski Competition, he was awarded the Silver Medal by Maurice Abravanel, and special recognition for best performance of Appalachian Spring, by Morton Gould.

Kiesler’s teachers include Carlo Maria Giulini, Erich Leinsdorf, John Nelson, Fiora Contino, Julius Herford, and James Wimer. He is included in Steven Sherman’s Leonard Bernstein at Work: The Final Years, Jeannine Wagar’s Conductors in Conversation: Fifteen Contemporary Conductors Discuss Their Lives and Profession, Allan Ho’s Shostakovich Reconsidered, and David Saler’s Serving Genius, the biography of the great Italian conductor Carlo Maria Giulini.

Kiesler is a trained wilderness guide and occasionally leads expeditions in the wilderness areas of Maine.

The Indianapolis News said: “Kiesler is a man with a musical mind at work. He recognizes a piece for what it is, whether it be Bach’s Third Suite or Respighi’s Roman Festivals. He reads, interprets, and conducts idiomatically, in the spirit in which a given work was written.”