Steven Fox Music Director

As we begin our 41st concert season, The Taghkanic Chorale is pleased to announce the appointment of Steven Fox as our ninth Music Director. He succeeds Martin Rutishauser, Thomas Bookhout, Johannes Somary and Dennis Keane in this position.

Described by the Russian press as a “unique director, capable of commanding the hall with flawless harmony of sound, from refined tenderness to triumphant power” (Petersburg Chronicle of Culture and Art), American conductor Steven Fox made his debut as the Artistic Director of the Clarion Music Society in 2006.

The founder and Music Director of Russia’s first period-instrument orchestra, Musica Antiqua St Petersburg, Mr. Fox is a persuasive champion for the rediscovery and performance of works composed during the reign of Catherine the Great. With both Clarion and Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg, he has revived the works of many of the greatest 18th-century Russian composers including Dmitri Bortniansky, Maxim Berezovsky, and Evstigney Fomin.

Among the works he has premiered from this period is the earliest symphony by a Russian composer – Berezovsky’s Sinfonia in C (c.1770) – which he conducted in London, St. Petersburg, and New York. Olga Betko of the BBC World Service heralded his discovery of this work as “absolutely remarkable.” He also revived Dmitri Bortniansky’s final opera, Le fils rival, conducting it in the Hermitage Theater, St. Petersburg, in 2004.

In the upcoming season, Mr. Fox will conduct Musica Antiqua on an international tour of the Russian 18th-century melodrama, Orpheus, by Fomin, while exploring the composers of another dazzling court, that of Frederick the Great of Prussia with Clarion.

Mr. Fox studied Music and Russian at Dartmouth College, graduating as a Senior Fellow with High Honors and three of the school’s top academic awards. He then received his MMus degree with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music, London, along with three of the institution’s most prestigious awards: Sir Thomas Armstrong Prize, the Peter Le Huray Award and the Alan Kirby Prize.