Mitchell Sardou Klein

Mitchell Sardou Klein is in his 12th season as Music Director of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. He is also Music Director of the Peninsula Symphony, and regularly guest conducts orchestras throughout the United States and Europe. Maestro Klein is a winner of many prestigious awards, including the 2000 ASCAP Award for Programming of American Music on Foreign Tour (with PYO), the 1993 Bravo Award for his contribution to the Bay Area’s cultural life, the 2001 Jullie Billiart Award from the College of Notre Dame for Outstanding Community Service, and a 1996 award for the year’s best television performance program in the Western States (for the PBS program about him and the Peninsula Symphony).

In his most recent appearances as a guest conductor in California, he has conducted the Inland Empire/Riverside Philharmonic, Ballet San Jose, and the California Riverside Ballet, and this season he will debut with the Santa Rosa Symphony. Other recent concerts have included his return to Europe to guest conduct the New Polish Philharmonic and the Suddettic Philharmonic, concert tours of Austria, Hungary, Prague, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand with PYO, numerous return engagements to the San Jose Symphony, and his return to the podium of the Santa Cruz Symphony. Prior guest conducting appearances have included the Seattle Symphony, Richmond Symphony, Eastern Philharmonic, Flagstaff Festival Symphony, Amarillo Symphony, Lexington Philharmonic, South Bend Symphony, and many others. Maestro Klein also has extensive experience in conducting ballet orchestras, including the Kansas City, Lone Star, Oakland, and Westport Ballets, as well as the Theater Ballet of San Francisco and les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.

Maestro Klein led over a hundred concerts as Associate Conductor of the Kansas City Philharmonic (where he was also Principal Pops Conductor and Principal Conductor of Starlight Theater, the Philharmonic’s summer home), and also served as Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony.

Mr. Klein was born in New York City into a musical family that included members of the Claremont and Budapest String Quartets. He began cello studies at age four with his father, Irving Klein, founder of the Claremont Quartet. His mother, Elaine Hartong Klein, danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.
Since 1984, he has been Director of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition. Held in San Francisco each June, this Competition has become one of the most prominent in the world, featuring prizes totaling $20,000, attracting applicants from more than twenty nations annually, and launching numerous major international concert careers.

Cited for his “keen judgment, tight orchestral discipline, feeling for tempo, and unerring control,” Maestro Klein has conducted many significant world, American, and West Coast premieres, including works by Bohuslav Martinu, Meyer Kupferman, Joan Tower, Hans Kox, George Barati, Benjamin Lees, Melissa Hui, Rodion Shchedrin, Alvin Brehm, and Margaret Garwood. He has appeared frequently on national and international broadcasts, including National Public Radio, the Voice of America, the WFMT Fine Arts Network, PBS Television, and KQED television. He lives in Oakland with his wife, violist Patricia Whaley, and his daughter Elizabeth, who was a PYO percussion section member for five seasons, and is now in college.