Page 40 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

benjamin manis
Resident Conductor
The Grand Teton Music Festival is excited to welcome Benjamin Manis as our new Resident Conductor.
American conductor Manis marked a successful end
of his tenure as an Associate Conductor of the Utah
Symphony in the summer of 2023. During his time
with the orchestra, he led performances on tour
throughout the state of Utah as well as at Abravanel
Hall and the Deer Valley Music Festival. Before
moving to Salt Lake City,
38 Grand Teton Music Festival Season 63
Manis spent three seasons as Resident Conductor
of the Houston Grand Opera, making his debut
with Verdi’s Rigoletto. Other highlights of his time in
Houston include performances of Carmen, Romeo
et Juliette and The Snowy Day. He led four world
premieres, among them the 2020 world premiere
of Marian’s Song with the subsequent HGO
Digital filmed version and Miller Outdoor Theatre
performances of the same work. Manis returned to
HGO in the 2022-23 season to lead productions of
Tosca and El Milagro del Recuerdo to critical acclaim.
The 2023-24 season marked returns to the Utah
Symphony including a gala performance with
Itzhak Perlman, as well as debuts with Rhode Island
Philharmonic Orchestra and Utah Opera leading a
production of The Little Prince. In spring of 2024,
Manis led a double bill of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas
and Britten’s Rape of Lucretia at Rice University’s
Shepherd School of Music. In August of 2023, Manis
assisted Donald Runnicles during the semi-staged
production of Madame Butterfly, a finale of that
year’s Grand Teton Music Festival.
Three-time winner of the Solti Foundation US Career
Assistance Awards (2023, 2022, 2019), Manis has
assisted renowned conductors such as Thierry
Fischer, Gianandrea Noseda, David Robertson and
Stéphane Denève at the St. Louis, Dallas and National
Symphonies. Over the course of three years in the
Aspen Conducting Academy he assisted and worked
closely with conductors such as Robert Spano,
Ludovic Morlot, Leonard Slatkin, James Conlon and
Vasily Petrenko. After winning the Aspen Conducting
Prize, Manis was invited to returned to Aspen in
the summer of 2021 as Assistant Conductor,
where he conducted two programs with the Aspen
Chamber Symphony.
Manis studied cello and conducting at the Colburn
School, where he conducted outreach concerts in
public schools across Los Angeles and performed
Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto as soloist with conductor
Robert Spano. A student of the late Larry Rachleff,
he completed his Master of Music degree in 2019 at
Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
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