Stephen Stubbs, who won the Grammy award as conductor for Best Opera Recording in 2015, maintains a busy calendar as a lutenist and guest conductor. He spent 30 years living and working in Europe before returning to his native Seattle in 2006 as one of the world’s most respected baroque music specialists. He is the founding artistic director of Pacific MusicWorks and the permanent artistic co-director of the Boston Early Music Festival, where he has co-conducted the operas since 1997. Stephen’s recent recordings with BEMF have yielded five Grammy nominations, two Echo Klassik Awards, and the Diapason d’Or. His extensive discography includes well over 100 albums, many of which have received international acclaim and awards. After several years performing as a lutenist throughout England and Europe, working with Alan Curtis, William Christie, The Hilliard Ensemble, and many others, Stubbs began his career as an opera conductor with Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival. This first engagement led to the founding of the ensemble Tragicomedia and since then, he has remained in demand worldwide as a conductor.

As guest conductor of concert and opera, Stubbs has been engaged multiple times with Opera Omaha, including for Handel’s Agrippina, Semele, and Stradella’s San Giovanni Battista. Other recent opera engagements include Monteverdi’s Tancredi et Clorinda and Tirsi et Clori with Seattle Opera, and Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo for Los Angeles Opera. Following a successful debut conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, he was invited to conduct the Symphony’s performances of Messiah, a work he has also led with Houston Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Alabama Symphony, and Symphony Nova Scotia. Other guest appearances include the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Musica Angelica Los Angeles, and Early Music Vancouver. In Europe, he has led performances of Gluck’s Orfeo and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Bilbao, Spain and Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam.

In 2008 Stubbs founded Pacific MusicWorks in Seattle with an acclaimed staging of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses. Since then, with this ensemble he has conducted staged performances of Handel’s Semele, Mozart’s Magic Flute, and Gluck’s Orphée, as well as concerts of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, Bach’s St John Passion, and Handel’s Trionfo del Tempo, Apollo and Daphne, Messiah, and Samson. Much in demand for his work with student and emerging performers, he works regularly with leading training programs, including the Juilliard School where he recently conducted Cavalli’s La Calisto and Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie; the University of California Los Angeles Opera for Cavalli’s Giasone, Handel’s Agrippina, Amadigi, and L’Allegro, Monteverdi’s Poppea, and Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphee; and the Merola Opera Institute for Mozart’s Il re pastore. Also, from 2013 to 2018 he was Senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington’s School of Music.