biography
James Setapen is a visionary conductor who has brought artistic excellence, audience engagement, and the joy of learning about music wherever he has been. His broad background and interests include positions as Music Director, Associate Conductor, guest conductor, university professor, opera coach and conductor, mentor to young musicians, and public speaker and writer.
He is currently Director of the Academy and Conductor-in-Residence at the Music Institute of Chicago. From 1988 to 2007 he was Music Director and Conductor of the Amarillo Symphony Orchestra, where he had a very successful tenure – raising and sustaining the quality of performance, developing community interest and knowledge, and establishing innovative and accessible programs. His engaging and organized manner in rehearsal enabled the musicians to work to the best of their ability.
During his tenure the Symphony premiered several new works, expanded its outreach into the community, initiated a side by side concert with the Youth Orchestra and an outdoor Labor Day Concert with fireworks, performed a very broad spectrum of the repertoire, and was the subject of two television documentaries which were each broadcast in over one hundred markets throughout the country.
Setapen has conducted many orchestras and opera companies in the United States, including those of Baltimore, Indianapolis, Honolulu, Denver, and Orlando. He has also conducted in several cities in Italy, Germany and Austria.
In June 2002 he and his daughter Ilana were guest conductor and violin soloist with the Musical Offering of Venice Chamber Orchestra, where both the audience and orchestra received them very warmly. In June 2005 they were again featured as soloist and conductor with the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Former Associate Conductor of the Denver and Omaha Symphony Orchestras, Setapen won first prize in the Oakland, California Symphony’s American Conductor Competition. As the San Francisco Examiner reported, “…the consensus choice of the six judges, the orchestra and the audience…[he displayed] undeniable power and vitality – conductorial authority – that won him the prize.”
James Setapen received his Bachelor of Music with Distinction and a Performer’s Certificate in Clarinet from the Eastman School of Music and a Master of Music in Opera Direction from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has also studied conducting with Boris Goldovsky, Max Rudolf, Christoph Eschenbach; and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and in Italy with Franco Ferrara. Setapen has been on the faculty of the Conductor’s Institute at Bard College in New York.