Molly Turner
Liz Sam
Marissa Pueschel
Elliot Samphier
“Turner conducted with infectious zest and enthusiasm and drew a large sonic palette from the instrumental forces”
South Florida Classical Review, 2024
Described by the Washington Post as “a force of nature from the podium”, rising star, American conductor Molly Turner is an exceptional young talent who directs with fervour and imagination. She is the current Conducting Fellow of New World Symphony as well as a 2024/25 Dudamel Fellow with Los Angeles Philharmonic. At New World, she leads the orchestra in subscription, family, education and holiday concerts, while Dudamel Fellow season highlights include a ‘Noon to Midnight’ performance with LA Phil New Music Group and conducting Los Angeles Philharmonic in a ‘Symphonies for Schools’ concert.
In 2024/25 Turner also appears with Minnesota Orchestra as part of their education concert series, and twice serves as cover conductor for New York Philharmonic. Recent conducting highlights include Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox Series, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, Juilliard Orchestra, Dallas Opera Orchestra and Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music, among others. In 2019 Turner was the youngest conductor invited for a residency at the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors. She is also the first recipient of the Judy Rodin Fellowship for an Outstanding Woman Musician.
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From Beethoven and Brahms to Stravinsky, Bartók and Barber, Turner’s wide-ranging repertoire also includes a strong interest in contemporary music; she has conducted works by Wynton Marsalis, Jessie Montgomery and Caroline Shaw, to name a few, and has collaborated with composers such as Jimmy Lopez, Donnacha Dennehy, Paul Novak and Max Vinetz. A composer herself, she has premiered her own works – most recently Open Doors for orchestra. In her own music, she is interested in the balance between strictly dictated elements and more aleatoric notation, and her relationship to the standard repertoire is often integrated in subtle ways beneath the foreground of the music. Pursuing projects outside of the traditional concert hall is also an important part of Turner’s artistic identity, from improvisatory works to multimedia performances.
Turner has served as assistant conductor for Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Utah Symphony, San Diego Symphony and Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. She received her artist diploma at the Colburn Conservatory of Music, studying under the guidance of Esa-Pekka Salonen in the Negaunee Conducting Program as a Salonen Fellow, and completed her master’s degree in orchestral conducting at The Juilliard School. She initially trained as a composer, receiving her bachelor’s degree at Rice University. Turner has previously taken part in the Gstaad Festival Conducting Academy, Aspen Conducting Academy and Eastern Music Festival.
HarrisonParrott represents Molly Turner for worldwide general management.
“Conducting fellow Molly Turner led Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Tristan und Isolde to open the concert. She captured the mystery of the opening chords and kept a natural, organic flow throughout the romantic curtain raiser.”
“A composer and a force of nature from the podium, she drew from her fellow fellows a combustible performance of Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Port of Call, its thrilling mechanistic sound world inspired by the shipyards of Norfolk…”
“Turner conducted with infectious zest and enthusiasm and drew a large sonic palette from the instrumental forces”