BALLET
Gary Sheldon’s distinguished career conducting for ballet includes positions with Atlanta Ballet, BalletMet, San Francisco Ballet and Miami City Ballet where he is currently in his 13th season as principal conductor and music director. His tenure with San Francisco Ballet which included tours to the Kennedy Center and the Peoples Republic of China. It was also Sheldon’s recording of Don Quixote with the Slovak Symphony Orchestra that San Francisco Ballet danced to at Les Ḗtés de Danse in Paris.
With Miami City Ballet, Maestro Sheldon has conducted premieres by Alexie Ratmansky, Justin Peck, Brian Brooks, Liam Scarlett, Amy Hall Garner and Claudia Schreier, for whom he composed the score to The Source, an arrangement of the music of Julius Eastman, which premiered in April 2022. Company tours saw his debut at The Koch Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York, the Center for Performing Arts in Ottawa, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Le Chatelet in Paris and most recently, at Jacob’s Pillow where Sheldon was the first conductor to conduct at the new Ted Shawn Theater.
Photo: Gary Sheldon with the Miami City Ballet dancers and pianist Francisco Renno, following Jerome Robbins' "The Concert".
MIAMI CITY BALLET
Sheldon’s compositions also include the score to the ballet Cole, based on the music of Cole Porter with choreography by Wayne Soulant, and Butterfly, based on the music of Puccini with choreography by David Nixon. Both commissions by BalletMet.
Sheldon has also conducted pas de deux for Cynthia Gregory and Alexander Godunov, Marianna Tcherkassky, Soili Arvola and Leo Ahonen and Fernando Bujones and Susan Jaffe and Ethan Stiefel. Guest conducting appearances have included the New Orleans Ballet, Delta Festival Ballet, Hartford Ballet, Arkansas Ballet, Alberta Ballet and The Norwegian Ballet in Oslo.
As principal conductor and artistic director of the Lancaster Festival in Ohio since 1988, Sheldon has commissioned and produced numerous ballets for young audiences including Puss n’ Boots with music by Gary William Friedman, The Frog Prince with music of Massenet, The Spider’s Feast – music by Rossini and Roussel, The Three Musketeers – music by Charles Weatherbee and Peter and the Wolf of Prokofiev.
Photo: Gary Sheldon (center) with artistic director Lourdes Lopez (seated left) and the Miami City Ballet dancers and Opus One Orchestra on the set of the Nutcracker.
REVIEWS
BalletMet and San Francisco Ballet. Eden Eden, chor. Wayne McGregor/San Francisco Ballet - "The musical performance of "Dolly" by Steve Reich, conducted by Gary Sheldon, may have been worth the price of admission." - Allan Ulrich, Voice of Dance
Sleeping Beauty - "Conductor Gary Sheldon transformed the Columbus Symphony Orchestra into a true partner to the dancers in every way, with seemingly ideal tempos and a flair for excitement, surely one reason the company moved so musically from beginning to end." - Barbara Zuck, Columbus Dispatch