Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

Steven Fox

Steven Fox is artistic director of the Clarion Society in New York and the founder and music director of Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg in Russia. He appeared as an associate conductor for three productions at New York City Opera and was presented by Lincoln Center leading the Clarion Choir at Alice Tully Hall in November 2010. In 2009–10 he was a guest director with the Yale Schola Cantorum and acting director of music at Trinity Church, Wall Street.

He makes his conducting debut next season in two concerts with the Handel and Haydn Society (Boston) and with Juilliard415. This year he leads a tour of two Russian 18th-century operas with Musica Antiqua St. Petersburg. Also an active tenor, Mr. Fox has performed extensively as a soloist and with some of the leading ensembles in New York and London.

Mr. Fox studied at Dartmouth College and the Royal Academy of Music, London, where he graduated with distinction in 2003 and where, in 2010, he was named an Associate. He has recently taught master classes and clinics in Historical Performance and Early Oratorio at Dartmouth College, The Juilliard School, and Yale University.

Critical Acclaim for Steven Fox

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL (UK)
Stan Metzger, May 24, 2011
“What can I say about Steven Fox that I haven’t said before? Adding to my last rave review, I can attest that having experienced his recent conducting with two different orchestras, where he achieved similar impressive results, there is no questioning his ability to draw out from musicians their best possible playing. Clearly, he has a tremendous rapport with musicians, and this ability makes him a conductor to follow.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Allan Kozinn, May 18, 2011
“Mr. Fox led his small, polished choir and a robust period-instrument band in a brisk, carefully balanced reading, and had the benefit of a solid, well-matched cast of soloists. Steven Caldicott Wilson, the tenor, projected Judas’s valor and faith powerfully, qualities matched by Jesse Blumberg in Simon’s brief appearances. Silvie Jensen, a mezzo-soprano, and Lauren Snouffer, a soprano, are both adept at Handelian filigree and gave beautiful accounts (alone and together) of most of the arias by the unnamed characters. Daniel Taylor, the countertenor, picked up a few of the bit parts, too, and gave an exquisite performance of ‘Father of heav'n!’”

SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL (UK)
Stan Metzger, December 2010
When Bach is performed well, as it was tonight, one could almost think, ‘Why bother with any other music?’ …a performance as perfect as the one tonight had my mind racing... I had never noticed the beautiful interpolations of the wind solo refrains from the first movement into the final Chorale of the second cantata. The repartee between the strings and the oboe d'amores, each group in respectful conversation, was new to me. I was mesmerized by the energy, enthusiasm, passion and attention to detail displayed here …

“I have seen Steven Fox several times, and I must say he outdid himself in this performance. I missed the premier of this program at another venue two years ago, but can't imagine it being any better. His choice of tempo, his understanding of Bach and Baroque style, and his selection of seldom-heard repertory are unexcelled.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Barbara Jepson, November 18, 2010
"[Paul] Jacobs asked the superb Clarion Choir to perform [the Bach chorale settings] a capella before each organ setting. Skillfully led by Steven Fox, the choristers sang with purity of tone and ensemble precision."

MUSICAL AMERICA
Dennis Rooney, November 19, 2010
"Fox and his choristers performed [Bach’s choral settings] artistically, their beautiful voices sounding out ideally..."

MUSICAL AMERICA
Leslie Kendall, December 2010
"Steven Fox…is climbing fast in the early music world, recently leading this choir at the rededication of the organ in Alice Tully Hall.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Oestreich, April 22, 2010
400-Year-Old Work Gets a Fresh Look

THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Oestreich, December 16, 2008
"Steven Fox, Clarion's artistic director, led judiciously paced performances, and the terrific chorus, which also furnished the vocal soloists, produced a clear, sturdy sound...The orchestra, using period instruments, was also generally accomplished...In all it was a deeply satisfying evening..."

THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
Leslie Kandell, July 30, 2008
"Their program, 'Music of the Russian Baroque,' but arguably music of the Russian Classical era, was an excursion into the unfamiliar and fascinating. ... Technique and tone in the long program were precise, articulate and strong, with [Steven] Fox in control of dynamics. Cutoffs and grand pauses were a joy. ... [The musicians succeeded] in moving the sound quality into the forceful timbres and big low notes of Eastern Europe and the Orthodox Church."

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Susan Eliott, May 2008
“Visionary: artistic director Steven Fox is leading the Clarion Society’s renaissance. And if Fox has his way, New York’s early-music community will no longer be a sometime thing.”

MUSICAL AMERICA
George Loomis, February 4, 2008
"Under its new music director, Clarion Music Society is re-emerging as an important force in Early Music. Young maestro Fox, who took over the moribund Clarion two years ago and seems poised to usher the ensemble into an exciting new era, was right to spotlight Frederick's court. ... Fox is fortunate to have singers capable of giving creditable accounts of these difficult arias. Also heard were some rousing choruses. Fox's conducting showed a sure feeling for the elegance and drama of the music."

THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Oestreich, February 2, 2008
"Taking various cues from Adolf von Menzel's 1852 painting 'The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great at Sans Souci,' Mr. Fox assembled an elaborate musical soiree of a sort that might have occurred at the palace of Frederick, an avid amateur flutist and composer, filling the little stage with 20 singers and players. It proved a pleasant conceit, allowing for a variety of genres and a mix of the known with the wildly unfamiliar."

AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
David Moore, September/October 2007
“[Dmitri Bortniansky's Priditye Vospoim] showed off the choir's unusually well-balanced tone, and the music showed imaginative word painting and a rich sonority that one hardly expects to encounter in 18th Century music. Steven Fox conducted with precision and expression… For me, the stars of this concert were the choir and conductor-programmer-annotator Steven Fox. The concert introduced me to composers I have missed and showed me new sides to composers I thought I knew. That has been characteristic of Clarion's approach from the beginning…Let's give Clarion a summer festival where they can spread out at length!”

THE NEW YORK TIMES
James Oestreich, October 14, 2006
"Bernard Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra loomed like Goliath this week with their complete round of the Beethoven symphonies at Avery Fisher Hall. But on Wednesday evening, as that series hit its climax with the Ninth Symphony, the plucky little Clarion Music Society mounted a significant challenge with a Beethoven concert of its own at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue. In terms of novelty and adventure, David won. …The venerable Clarion Music Society, founded in 1957, stopped performing in 2001, five years after the death of its founder, Newell Jenkins. But it came back to life early this year with Steven Fox as artistic director, and it is good to have it back.”

 

---

Clarion Music Society, PO Box 259, New York, NY 10021
212.580.5700 info@clarionsociety.org.