"Conductor Brian Stone had everyone's attention;" (Susan Larson, Boston Globe 4/8/00), "The hero was conductor Brian Stone... (who) galvanized the Boston Conservatory Orchestra and made music sense of every bar." (Lloyd Scwartz, Boston Phoenix 4/21/00). Such was the critical response to Mr. Stone's performance of Virgil Thomson's and Gertrude Stein's opera Four Saints in Three Acts at the Boston Conservatory.

Brian began his musical career playing saxophone in the public schools of Santa Monica, California. Already an exceptional player as a youth, he went on to win several competitions. Later, he took up viola and piano, and started composing as well. Brian is a graduate of Bennington College in Vermont, where he studied composition, viola and literature. Further studies in composition took place at the Aspen Music Festival where he conducted his own work, "Nesting."

Brian has received both masters and doctoral degrees in conducting from the Peabody Conservatory. For two years, he was the assistant conductor of the Peabody Symphony and is now the studio assistant to the conducting program. As well as presenting four recitals of his own, he has conducted the Peabody Symphony in concert on three different occasions. Additional studies in conducting took place at Le Domaine Forget with Otto-Werner Mueller and two summers at the Festival at Sandpoint with Gunther Schuller.

Active in both the symphonic and operatic fields, Brian conducted John Harbison's chamber opera Full Moon in March at the Baltimore Theater Project and returned conducting a performance of Conrad Susa's and Anne Sexton's Transformations. He was the assistant to the conductor for the Baltimore Opera production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and was the conductor for Stephen Paulus' The Village Singer at Baltimore's "Artscape" summer festival. For four years, he was the coach, conductor and host of Johns Hopkins University chamber series as well as being the Symphony's Associate Conductor. Currently, he is music director of the University of Delaware Orchestra.

In 1999, Brian was one of six conductors chosen to participate in the National Conductor Preview with the Utah Symphony.

In the past, Mr. Stone has conducted the Spokane Symphony, the Greater Bridgeport Symphony (CT), the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, the Savaria (Hungary) Symphony, the Ohio University Symphony, the Catholic University Chamber Orchestra, the University of Maryland Orchestra, the Goucher College Orchestra, the Chesapeake Youth Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony; as a guest on Marvin Hamlisch's Pop Concert.

In addition to his conducting activities, Brian is a speaker at the Baltimore Symphony, and for four years was a popular lecturer at Peabody's highly successful Elderhostel. He is also a frequent guest on radio.

Mr. Stone's principal teachers were Allen Shawn and Henry Brant in composition, Jacob Glick in viola, Harvey Pittel in saxophone, and Frederik Prausnitz and Gustav Meier in conducting.