Music
Leonard Slatkin
born 1944 · conductor, composer, author
American conductor who led the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2018, through the city's financial crisis and a six-month strike, and became its first music director laureate.
- Born
Los Angeles, California
age 82- Birth name
- Leonard Edward Slatkin
- Detroit years
- 2008–2018
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Slatkin, a Los Angeles native from a family of Hollywood studio musicians, was named the DSO's music director in October 2007 after a five-year search and led his first concert in the post in December 2008. His Detroit decade coincided with the city's deepest economic crisis. He accepted a pay cut, and in October 2010 the musicians went on a strike that lasted six months before a new contract was signed in April 2011. Afterward the orchestra rebuilt its audience with lower ticket prices, a neighborhood concert series in the suburbs and, from 2011, Live from Orchestra Hall, the first free webcast series by an American orchestra. In 2013 he took the DSO back to Carnegie Hall for the first time in seventeen years. The orchestra gave the world premiere of his elegy Kinah in 2015. When he stepped down in 2018 he became the first music director laureate in the orchestra's history.
Highlights
- Music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 2008–2018
- Led the DSO through the 2010–2011 musicians' strike and its aftermath
- Launched with the DSO the free Live from Orchestra Hall webcasts (2011)
- DSO premiered his elegy Kinah in December 2015
- First music director laureate of the DSO
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Performed here · 2008–2018
Detroit Symphony Orchestra — Orchestra Hall
The DSO's home hall, where Slatkin conducted for a decade and where the free Live from Orchestra Hall webcasts began in 2011.