A native of New York, KENNETH KIESlER studied at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, the Aspen Music School in Colorado, and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. At twenty-three he was the youngest conductor of a full production in the history of the prestigious Indiana University Opera Theater. He was accepted into the Leonard Bernstein American Conductors Program; won the silver medal at the 1986 Stokowski Competition at Avery Fisher Hail; received the Helen M. Thompson Award (in 1988); and in 1990 was one of four American conductors selected to conduct the Ensemble Intercontemporain in sessions with Pierre Boulez during the Carnegie Hall Centenary. Kiesler was music director of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra for twenty years, becoming conductor laureate at the end of the 1999-2000 season, and is now music director of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra. He has appeared as guest conductor with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony, and he has conducted the Jerusalem and Haifa symphony orchestras in Israel; the Osaka Philharmonic in Japan; the New Symphony in Sofia, Bulgaria; and the Pusan Symphony in Korea. He has conducted many operas, and has collaborated with such prominent instrumentalists and singers as Peter Serkin, Lorin Hollander, Joshua Bell, Sylvia McNair, William Warfield, Byron Janis, Sharon Isbin, and David Shifrin. Since 1995 he has held the positions of professor of conducting and director of university orchestras at the University
