Conductors

Mitchell Sardou Klein is Music Director of the Peninsula Symphony and the Peninsula Youth Orchestra and a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the United States and abroad. Maestro Klein is a winner of many prestigious awards with decades of experience in the U.S. and abroad. His innumerable honors include the 2000 ASCAP Award for Programming of American Music on Foreign Tour, the 1993 Bravo Award for his contribution to the Bay Area's cultural life, and a 1996 award for the year's best television performance program in the Western States for a PBS special about him and the Peninsula Symphony.

In addition to his work with the Peninsula Symphony, Maestro Klein has spent almost 20 years as the Director of the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, which is named after his father, a famed cellist. Held in San Francisco each June, the Competition has become one of the most prominent in the world, featuring a first place prize of $10,000, attracting applicants from more than twenty nations annually. The Klein Competition has launched numerous major international careers of artists such as Alyssa Park, Wendy Warner, and Mark Kosower.

Maestro Klein has appeared on the podiums of such orchestras as the New Polish Philharmonic, San Jose Symphony, Seattle Symphony and many others. Cited for his "keen judgment, tight orchestral discipline, feeling for tempo, and unerring control", Maestro Klein has appeared frequently on national and international broadcasts, including National Public Radio, the Voice of America, the WFMT Fine Arts Network, and PBS Television.

Conductor Nathaniel Berman maintains a wide range of activities as a performer and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. A faculty member at UC Santa Cruz, he is conductor of the UCSC Concert Choir, and has appeared as guest conductor of the Orchestra and Opera Theater, including a premier of Allen Shearer's chamber opera Riddle Me in 2011. Mr. Berman is also Music Director of the Santa Cruz County Youth Symphony, and served as assistant conductor of the Oakland Civic Orchestra from 2011-12. In July of 2012, he appeared with the Rochester Philharmonic as one of the participants of the Eastman Summer Conducting Institute selected to perform in concert with the RPO.

Equally dedicated to new music and interdisciplinary collaboration, Mr. Berman has been a member and assistant conductor of the professional new-music chorus Volti, and is currently the conductor for the San Francisco-based new-music collective Wild Rumpus. He has appeared as a conductor and trumpet player for puppet theater performances at the San Francisco Performance Art Institute, and in April of 2013, he will premiere music by UCSC faculty member Hi Kyung Kim at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C. Mr. Berman received his Master's degree in conducting from UC Santa Cruz, where he studied with Nicole Paiement. His first instrument was trumpet, and he grew up playing duets with his dad, a jazz pianist and singer.