Associate Conductor

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Sean Newhouse has been Associate Conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra since 2008.  He is the winner of the Aspen Conducting Prize and major prizes at the prestigious Malko and Fitelberg competitions.  Recent guest conducting has taken him to the Cleveland Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony, Silesian Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Aspen Concert Orchestra, among others.  This season with the ISO, Mr. Newhouse conducts the Happy Hour, Discovery, and Parks series, as well as New Year’s Eve, the American Pianists Association 2009 Competition, and performances on the Family and Symphony on the Prairie series.  He will make his ISO subscription debut in the 2009-2010 season.
 
Mr. Newhouse’s performances have drawn praise from both audiences and critics.  He opened the ISO’s 2008-2009 season to great critical acclaim, substituting for Music Director Mario Venzago on short notice. Reviews commended his “expert” conducting and hailed the performances as “electrifying.”  The New York Times called his performance of Joan Tower’s “Strike Zones”, in Tanglewood’s 2007 Festival of Contemporary Music, “the real dazzler of the festival”, singling out its “vitality and color.”  NUVO applauded his recent ISO Symphony on the Prairie debut in an all-Beethoven program, citing his “sense of ease within the electricity” and “winning stage presence.”  In 2006, when Mr. Newhouse debuted with the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom, the Akron Beacon Journal lauded the performance as “luminous.” 

From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Newhouse was Music Director and Conductor of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra of Los Angeles, where he followed in the footsteps of such illustrious alumni YMF conductors as Michael Tilson Thomas, Lawrence Foster, Myung-Whun Chung, and Daniel Hege.  Highlights of his three seasons with the YMF Debut Orchestra included seven world premieres, a nationally televised holiday concert and a performance for the President and First Lady, and a collaboration with the Angel City Chorale and actress Toni Trucks for William Grant Still’s landmark work Lenox Avenue.  In 2006, Mr. Newhouse and the Debut Orchestra gave a special invited performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, for the League of American Orchestras National Conference.  Mr. Newhouse returned with the Debut Orchestra to Disney Hall in 2007 for an acclaimed performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s “Shadow of Stalin” festival.  His second and third seasons included the YMF Debut Orchestra’s first performances on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s historic “Sundays Live” series.

Mr. Newhouse studied at the Tanglewood Music Center, the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Eastman School of Music, and the Pierre Monteux School, among others.  His conducting mentors have included James Levine, Jorge Mester, David Zinman, Carl Topilow, Stefan Asbury, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Neil Varon.  Originally trained as a violinist, his teachers included Devy Erlih at the Alfred Cortot School in Paris and Joanna Owen at the Eastman School.