Strasbourg National Opera Appoints New Assistant Conductor

American conductor Matthew Straw will step into the role

Strasbourg National Opera, in France, recently announced that the young American conductor Matthew Straw will be its new Assistant Conductor. In order to take up the position, Straw will step down from his current assistantship at the Utah Symphony, where he has conducted more than 60 concerts.

Straw was the Helen F. Whitaker Conducting Fellow at the 2019 Aspen Music Festival, Conducting Fellow at the 2023 Cabrillo Festival, and a participant in the 2019 Järvi Academy of Conducting — and just recently, he was named as a repeat recipient of the Solti Foundation Career Assistance Award.

He made his debut with the Rochester Philharmonic in 2022 and was Associate Conductor at Des Moines Metro Opera in 2022. As assistant conductor he has worked with Kazushi Ono and the Brussels Philharmonic, and Ilan Volkov and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Straw holds a double degree from Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, with a BA in Philosophy and a BM in Conducting, Piano, and Voice. He received his master's degree from the Eastman School of Music, where his teachers were Robert Spano, Neil Varon, and Stanislav Ioudenitch.