​Brian Stone received a Master of Music and a Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Frederik Prausnitz and Gustav Meier. He also studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller at Le Domaine Forget and Gunther Schuller at the Festival at Sandpoint. His musical life has included work with many notable musicians including Bethany Beardslee, George Perle, Eddie Daniels, Gary Burton, Karel Husa, Elliot Schwartz, Robert Page, Leon Fleisher, Marc Neikrug, Leonard Slatkin and Gerard Schwarz. His performance of Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts earned critical acclaim: “Conductor Brian Stone had everyone’s attention,” Susan Larson, Boston Globe, April 8, 2000; “The hero was conductor Brian Stone … (who) galvanized the Boston Conservatory Orchestra and made musical sense of every bar,” Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix, April 21, 2000.

Dr. Stone began his musical career playing the saxophone in the public schools of Santa Monica, Calif. Already an exceptional player as a youth, he won several competitions. Later, he took up viola and piano, and he started composing as well. Dr. Stone is a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont, where he studied composition, viola and literature. He continued his studies in composition at the Aspen Music Festival, where he conducted his own work, Nesting. In 1999, Dr. Stone was one of six conductors chosen to participate in the National Conductor Preview with the Utah Symphony. In 2008, he received the Delaware Symphony Orchestra’s Jessie Ball du Pont Educators Award in recognition of his work, and in 2009 he was awarded the First Honours Diploma in the 29th Masterplayers International Music Competition.

Dr. Stone has conducted professional orchestras in Indiana, Utah, Maryland, Florida, Alaska, Washington, Connecticut, Germany, Hungary and Bulgaria; students at the University of Maryland, The Johns Hopkins University, Ohio University, Boston Conservatory, University of Mobile and the Catholic University of America; and the All-State honor orchestras of Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.