TŌN | Leon Botstein
Photo by Matt Dine
Leon Botstein
Leon Botstein is founder and music director of The Orchestra Now (TŌN), music director and principal conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO), artistic codirector of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival, and conductor laureate and principal guest conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (JSO), where he served as music director from 2003 to 2011. He has been guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mariinsky Theatre, Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Taipei Symphony, Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, and Sinfónica Juvenil de Caracas in Venezuela, among others. In May 2025 he led two concerts with TŌN in Koblenz and Nuremberg, Germany marking 80 years since the surrender of Nazi Germany. With ASO he has revived numerous neglected operas and rare repertoire, such as Schoenberg’s massive
Gurre-Lieder
, Richard Strauss’s first opera,
Guntram
, and the U.S. premiere of Sergei Taneyev’s final work,
At the Reading of a Psalm
Albums include
The Lost Generation
and
Exodus
, two 2024 releases with TŌN; Hindemith’s
The Long Christmas Dinner
with the ASO; a Grammy-nominated recording of Popov’s First Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra; and other recordings with TŌN, ASO, the London Philharmonic, NDR Orchestra Hamburg, and JSO, among others. Fall 2025 releases include
Premieres
with violinist Gil Shaham and
Transcription as Translation
, both with TŌN. He is editor of
The Musical Quarterly
and author of numerous articles and books, including
The Compleat Brahms
(Norton),
Jefferson’s Children
(Doubleday),
Judentum und Modernität
(Böhlau), and
Von Beethoven zu Berg
(Zsolnay). Honors include Harvard University’s prestigious Centennial Award; the American Academy of Arts and Letters award; and Cross of Honor, First Class, from the government of Austria, for his contributions to music. Other distinctions include the Bruckner Society’s Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor for his interpretations of that composer’s music, the Leonard Bernstein Award for the Elevation of Music in Society, and Carnegie Foundation’s Academic Leadership Award. In 2011, he was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.