Susan Davenny Wyner
Conductor

Susan Davenny Wyner has received national acclaim for her conducting. The Library of Congress featured her in its 2003 "Women Who Dare" Engagement Calendar, and the MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour and WGBH Television have presented special documentary features on her life and work.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer hailed her as "a galvanizing presence", and went on to state: “Wyner...defines those attributes reserved for the finest conductors. She has a firm vision of how a score should sound, an instinctive feel for texture and phrasing, and the ability to communicate ideas with almost laser-beam exactness to colleagues.” The Los Angeles Times praised her "sensitive and thoughtful leadership", The Chicago Tribune celebrated her "rousing and joyous" conducting, The New York Times praised her “ richly textured and emotionally compelling” performances, and The Boston Globe stated: “Wyner conducts with lucidly passionate specificity; she is musically and emotionally fearless" – and four times selected her conducted performances of concerts and opera as "Best Musical Events of the Year".

Susan Davenny Wyner's conducting credits include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Boston Lyric Opera, and Cleveland Orchestra members in three special benefit concerts. André Previn, Lynn Harrell, Claude Frank, Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Richard Stoltzman, Dominique Labelle, Lynn Chang, Eliot Fisk, Hung-Kuan Chen and Robert Levin have been among her guest soloists. She has conducted concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, in the Czech Republic , at the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals, in Chicago 's Orchestra Hall, as well as in New York and for CBS Radio. In 1998, The American Symphony Orchestra League named her a Catherine Filene Shouse Conductor – a first-time award given by a national panel of conductors and orchestral managers to conductors poised for major careers.

She has conducted a wide range of repertoire —symphonic, opera, oratorio, and choral—from the 14th to 21st centuries and has garnered praise for her work with period instruments as well as for her performances of works just composed. Her recording of Sam Adler’s Concertino #3 with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony has been released on Albany Records as has her premiere recording of Fussell’s “Keep the river on your right”, and she has presented over thirty premieres of new works. After she conducted Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah for Lake George Opera in 2003, Opera News praised the “terrific lyrical moments under Susan Davenny Wyner’s deft baton.”

From 1999-2005 she was Music Director and Conductor of The New England String Ensemble in Boston , a professional string orchestra that she brought to national prominence. Under her direction, the orchestra received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Koussevitsky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Copland Foundation, was presented by the Bank of Boston 2004-5 Celebrity Series, was regularly broadcast and recorded by WGBH, and was lauded for its gripping and innovative performances of music from the 1600’s to the present — including over twenty-five world and New England premieres.

Since 1999, she has been Music Director and Conductor of The Warren Philharmonic Orchestra near Cleveland , Ohio . In 2003 the orchestra was one of only two arts organizations in the state to receive a two-year funding grant from the Ohio State Arts Council. The Award was repeated in 2005. She is also Music Director and Conductor of Opera Western Reserve, an Ohio-based company created in 2004.

Trained initially as a violinist and violist, Susan Davenny Wyner went on to an international career as a soprano soloist—performing with the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the New York, Los Angeles, and Israel Philharmonics, among many others. Her eloquent voice and musicianship led to frequent engagements with such conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Sir Colin Davis, Erich Leinsdorf, André Previn, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Robert Shaw, and Michael Tilson Thomas. She recorded for Columbia Masterworks, Angel/EMI, Naxos , CRI and Musical Heritage.

Ms. Davenny Wyner graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with degrees in both comparative literature and music. She continued her studies at Yale and Columbia Universities and received conducting fellowships for study at the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals as well as at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. In 1998, she was Assistant Conductor of Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival, a position created especially for her. She has held conducting positions at the New England Conservatory, at The Cleveland Institute of Music, at Wellesley College , and at Brandeis and Cornell Universities .