Artist Bio

(Bio as of June 2002)

Beatrice Jona Affron most recently collaborated with the Goodman on Galileo Galilei during the 2001/2002 Season. She is a conductor of ballet, opera, contem­porary and symphonic music. She has been the music director and conductor of the Pennsylvania Ballet since 1997, where she has conducted many Balanchine ballets and other classics, such as Petroushka, Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty. A graduate of Yale University, she studied conducting privately with Robert Spano and at New England Conservatory with Pascal Verrot. Ms. Af­fron also has worked with Gunther Schuller, Jorge Mester and David Effron and in 1996 she received the Conductors’ Guild Thelma A. Robinson Award. Her involvement in contemporary music has includ­ed conducting in the Music at the Anthology Series (NYC) and, in the fall 1997, leading the national tour of Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles. Earlier, she served as chorus master and assistant conductor of the Bronx Opera Company and was music director of the Greater New Haven Youth Symphony Orchestra. In 2000, Ms. Affron conducted the Boston Lyric Opera and Chicago Opera Theatre productions of Glass’ Akhnaten and later that fall, she led the Kennedy Center Orchestra in the Kennedy Center’s Balanchine Celebration. In 2001 she led the St. Louis Symphony in the premiere of Dominick Ar­gento’s revised opera, Miss Havisham’s Fire. That same year, Ms. Affron began to serve as cover con­ductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Most re­cently, she conducted New England Conservatory Opera Theater’s production of Hansel and Gretel. In the spring of 2003, Ms. Affron will return to Boston Lyric Opera to conduct Strauss’ Die Fledermaus.

View IMDb page