Miller Outdoor Theatre: Dvořák Symphony No. 7

German conductor Christian Reif, who has quickly established a name for himself as a fast-rising talent, is music director of the Lakes Area Music Festival of Minnesota. In July 2019, Christian completed a three-year post as resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and music director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. His tenure culminated in a six-city European tour with the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, including performances at Vienna’s Musikverein, Berlin Philharmonie and Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Following the Berlin performance, the Merkur wrote of him that a “bright future and a great career must lie ahead.”

Christian Reif has conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Dallas Symphony, Ulster Orchestra, Romanian Radio Symphony, Aalborg Symphony, Fundación Excelentia in Madrid, North Carolina Symphony, San Antonio Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Toledo Symphony, Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Belgique and Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguese in Lisbon. Most recently, he conducted the Stavanger Symphony in a program of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 paired with Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with soprano Julia Bullock, and made his debut in 2021 with the Orchestre National d’île de France in a streamed performance of Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète.

His 2021-22 engagements include appearances with the Hallé Orchestra, Gävle Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, Odense Symphony, Munich Radio Orchestra, Brno Philharmonic, New World Symphony, and Kansas City Symphony.

Christian is the former resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and music director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. He was a conducting fellow with the New World Symphony 2014-2016 and a conducting fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in the summers of 2015 and 2016. He studied with Alan Gilbert at The Juilliard School, where he completed his masters of music in conducting in 2014 and received the Charles Schiff Conducting Award. Prior to that, he studied with Dennis Russell Davies at the Mozarteum Salzburg, where he received a diploma in 2012. Christian won the 2015 German Operetta Prize, awarded by the German Music Council, and two Kulturförderpreise awards given to promising artists of the region who promote cultural advancement in their communities.