Stephen Stubbs, who won the GRAMMY® Award as conductor for Best Opera Recording in 2015, maintains a busy calendar as a guest conductor, specializing in baroque opera and oratorio.

Stubbs began his career as an opera conductor with Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, which led to the founding of the ensemble Tragicomedia. Since 1997 Stephen has co-directed the bi-annual Boston Early Music Festival opera and is the permanent artistic co-director. BEMF’s recordings were nominated for six GRAMMY® awards in 2005, 2007, and 2009, 2015, 2017, and 2019. The 2015 GRAMMY® win was for Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphee. Also in 2015 BEMF recordings won two Echo Klassik awards in Germany, and the Diapason d’Or de l’Année in France. In 2017 they were presented with the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

Stephen is also the founding director of Pacific MusicWorks, a touring company with a core group of musicians who have worked together for over 15 years. See pacificmusicworks.com for more information. 

Following a successful debut conducting the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, he was subsequently invited back to conduct the Symphony’s performances of Messiah, a work he has also conducted with Houston Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Alabama Symphony, and Symphony Nova Scotia. Other guest appearances include the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Musica Angelica, and Early Music Vancouver.

As a guest conductor of opera, Stubbs has made multiple appearances with Opera Omaha including Handel’s Agrippina, Semele, and in the 19/20 season was booked there for Stradella’s San Giovanni Battista. Other recent opera engagements include Gluck’s Orfeo and Monteverdi’s Tancredi et Clorinda and Tirsi et Clori with Seattle Opera, and Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo for Los Angeles Opera. Overseas, he has led performances of Gluck's Orfeo and Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Bilbao, Spain, and Monteverdi's Orfeo at Amsterdam's Netherlands Opera.

Much in demand for work with student and emerging performers, he is a regular at leading conservatories and training programs, including the Juilliard School, where he most recently conducted Cavalli’s La Calisto and Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, and UCLA Opera where he has conducted Cavalli’s Giasone, Handel’s Agrippina, Amadigi, and L’Allegro, Monteverdi’s Poppea, and Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphee; Mozart’s Il re pastore at the Merola Opera Institute; Handel’s Rodelinda with the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts; and Mozart’s Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte as well as Monteverdi’s Poppea at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival. From 2013-2018 he was Senior Artist in Residence at the University of Washington’s School of Music.

In the 2024/25 season he is slated to conduct The Messiah at San Francisco Symphony, The Seasons at Boston Lyric Opera and Rameau’s Pygmalion at Kentucky Opera.

Stephen Stubbs was born in Seattle, Washington, where he studied composition, piano and harpsichord at the University of Washington. In 1974 he moved to England and then Amsterdam, and soon became a mainstay of the burgeoning early-music movement there, working with Alan Curtis on Italian opera in Italy, William Christie on French opera in France, as well as various ensembles in England and Germany, particularly the Hilliard Ensemble, which led to his career as a conductor and musical director.

BACH | St. John Passion | Pacific MusicWorks

“Stubbs, himself again supplying delicate tone and stylish phrasing on the lute, paced the whole work to perfection, and ended it brilliantly by beginning the last chorale with just one voice to a part and then building to a climax of vocal splendor and compelling emotional power.”

— Bernard Jacobson, Seattle Times

CARISSIMI | Oratorios-Prophets & CHARPENTIER The Denial of St. Peter | Pacific MusicWorks

 “Pacific MusicWorks Breathes New Life into Carissimi Oratorios”

"One of the hallmarks of Pacific MusicWorks is the quality of its performers. Music director Stephen Stubbs has an international reputation in the field of early music, as a lutenist and conductor of staged and unstaged performances, and he fields an international group of singers and musicians for his presentations. Here, Stubbs, on lute and harpsichord, directed a small group of equally fine musicians…A cast of eight singers performed the three Carissimi oratorios, Abraham and Isaac, Jephte, and Job, and Charpentier’s Le Reniement de St. Pierre. All of them are superb, expressive singers, who sound completely comfortable in the florid ornaments and runs of early 17th century Italian music." — The SunBreak

CAVALLI | La Calisto | Juilliard415 and Opera

… the singers couldn't have done their jobs so well without the brilliant musical ensemble, led by Stubbs from the harpsichord, providing a rich, gorgeous musical line that was intrinsic to the dramedy at hand.”

— Richard Sasanow, Broadway World

Stephen Stubbs, who was credited with Winokur as having “arranged and adapted” the piece for this performance, conducted the musicians of Juilliard415 in an aptly supple, sexy performance; the heavenly contours of “Lucidissima face,” Endimione’s song to the moon, were shaped with unerring style and surety and the last ensemble of the second act was exquisitely performed. — F. Paul Driscoll, Opera News

De’CAVALIERI | The Portrayal of the Soul and the Body | Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera

“…it comes as no surprise that a piece like  ‘Portrayal’—call it an opera, oratorio, or sacred drama – should  work so effectively. …Given Stubbs’ international credentials and reputation, it is not surprising the musical standards he revealed in this production were high. His small ensemble of some 13 musicians included some of the best-known names in the area….Stubbs doubled as conductor and one of the two players on the theorbo….What a notable beginning.” — R. M. Campbell, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

DESMARET | Circé | Boston Early Music Festival

"The Bostonians’ insightful musicianship and adroit theatricality enrich our understanding of French opera

in the decades between Lully and Rameau." – Gramophone Magazine

GLUCK | Orphée et Eurydice | Pacific MusicWorks

“All in all, a fascinating, unusual, thought-provoking production, as we have come to expect from anything Stubbs does.” — Philippa Kiraly, The SunBreak

“…this “Orphée” is an imaginative amalgamation of period authenticity and contemporary innovation. Melding those two is the gold standard of opera today…The goal was harmoniously achieved…tuneful arias and orchestral interludes, came to life in the hands of conductor Stephen Stubbs, who gave a warm, well-paced, and surprisingly zippy account of the music.” — Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times

GLUCK | Orphée et Eurydice | Seattle Opera

             “This slightly different, shorter ending is set to new music composed with close attention to Gluck’s

             writing by Stephen Stubbs, and the result is seamless.” – Bachtrack.com

GRAUPNER | Antiochus and Stratonica | Boston Early Music Festival

             “Enchanting…. "Under the direction of Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, this varied and intricate score

             comes across as a natural dramatic whole." – Early Music America

HANDEL | “Early Handel Cantatas” | Tragicomedia

 “Rare Baroque Jewels shine at Morgan Library with Boston’s Tragicomedia”

 "Tragicomedia presented a jewel-box of baroque cantatas at Gilder Lehrman Hall at the Morgan Library Museum. The elite ensemble, directed by Stephen Stubbs, includes some of America’s finest Baroque musicians. Friday evening’s concert also featured bass-baritone Douglas Williams…Baroque scores of this type have more in common with a “lead sheet” used by jazz musicians than scores by other composers, where what is written becomes law. The continuo group functions much like the rhythm section in a jazz combo…Stubbs is incredibly adept at adding echo effects in the music, imitating the vocal line in the melody of his improvised accompaniment. Hearing him perform certain pieces, one unfamiliar with continuo playing would assume he was playing from a well-wrought score by Handel himself."  — Bachtrack

“Tragicomedia Unsurpassed in Handel Cantatas”

 “It is, of course, one thing to have Stubbs co-direct the Boston Early Music Festival, but another thing entirely to have someone of Stubbs’s achievement and understanding performing on stage.”

— The Boston Musical Intelligencer

   | Acis and Galatea | Boston Early Music Festival

“The choral singing and instrumental playing are immaculate, well worthy of the BEMF’s high standards. ‘Wretched lovers’ – which, with its multiple tempos, is surely this work’s test piece for conducting – emerges very impressive here.” — David Shengold, Opera   

            | Messiah | Alabama Symphony

“Alabama Symphony's stirring 'Messiah' made even grander by conductor Stephen Stubbs' dramatic push.” — AL.com

“…this was invigorating, overarching baroque theater that could only be fully appreciated by total involvement from Sinfonia to Amen. The vast majority of the 1,100 or so in Jemison Concert Hall reaped those rewards…” — Michael Huebner, artsBHAM

             | Messiah | Seattle Symphony

“A performance of uncommon quality….Of all the dozens of Messiahs I have witnessed over the years, what Stubbs achieved was in almost every respect the finest. The “Historically Informed Performance Practice” movement is still, after more than half a century of research and experimentation, a work in progress. The most impressive thing about Stubbs’s direction was its total naturalness and freedom from the doctrinaire. This performance, while fully “informed,” never indulged in questionable excesses. There was not a single tempo from beginning to end of the afternoon that did not seem inevitable, nor a single rhythm that attracted inappropriate attention.” — Bernard Jacobson, Seenandheard International

“It was a compelling performance. This “Messiah” was led by Stephen Stubbs, a Seattle native who has established an international reputation as a lutenist, harpsichordist, and conductor of baroque opera. At times, the Seattle Symphony’s “Messiah” sounded almost operatic, with vivid emotional content and dramatic energy throughout the deftly trimmed score. (A few cuts were made in the oratorio, all of them defensible.) Sometimes a performance that attempts to marry the conventions of a modern orchestra with authentic 18th-century performance practice can be an awkward hybrid. Not this one. Stubbs got almost all the string players to play with minimal vibrato, but with a rich and well-shaped sound that was full of life and energy. He chose a cast of four soloists who were lavish in their choice of imaginative embellishments; some of those arias had more embroidery than the Unicorn Tapestries.  Stubbs got a flexible and expressive performance out of the Seattle Symphony Chorale, too: “Surely He hath borne our grief” was heart-wrenching, and the pacing of “Lift up your heads” was highly dramatic.”

— Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times

| Messiah | Houston Symphony

Stubbs led a historically informed rendition, devoid of the bloated and vibrato-enhanced practices of the past. Phrasing, dynamics, and musical nuances were clearly crafted…Stubbs led a reduced-size Houston Symphony ensemble, which played cleanly and alertly, adroitly adjusting their speed and volume as directed. — Lawrence Wheeler, Texas Classical Review

             | Semele | Pacific MusicWorks/University of Washington

“It is time to judge a bold experiment a success. When the University of Washington School of Music announced that acclaimed Seattle conductor/lutenist Stephen Stubbs would become artist-in-residence (and his organization, Pacific MusicWorks, would be ensemble-in-residence), it was unclear how the student-professional relationship would work in performances…Now, with the debut of the groups’ production of Handel’s opera “Semele,” it is clear that this is a solid professional production, with fortunate students lifted up to a world-class level.” — John Sutherland, The Seattle Times

             | Semele | Opera Omaha

“Stephen Stubbs masterfully conducted the Omaha Symphony and provided a rounded lushness to the production. The spare baroque orchestra set a delicate pace and allowed the singers to shine by enabling them to sustain emotional tensions.” — Kim Carpenter, Omaha World-Herald

“And the music was presided over by Stephen Stubbs, an experienced and authoritative presence in this repertoire - as he had been in the excellent Opera Omaha Agrippina in 2014.” — Brian Dickie

         | Serse | Opera Neo

         “Stephen Stubbs… led a robust but disciplined orchestra, keeping the instrumental counterpoint in sharp

focus and faithfully attuned to the needs of the singers.” – San Diego Story

HANDEL/PORPORA/HASSE | “Portrait of a Baroque Diva” (arias for Cuzzoni) | Seattle Baroque Orchestra

“…it is most appropriate that the first concert was led by someone who can be considered both an international star and a local boy. Stephen Stubbs, the returned prodigal light of the Seattle early music scene is uniquely qualified for a program like “Portrait of a Baroque Diva”. Not only is he a baroque opera specialist, but he has toured and recorded for years with (not one, but) three diva sopranos at the center of his group, Tragicomedia.” — John Sutherland, The Seattle Times

LaLANDE | Les Fontaines de Versailles/Le Concert d’Esculape | Boston Early Music Festival

"Baroque opera fans owe a debt of gratitude to Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs of Boston Early Music

Festival, America’s leading light when it comes to the rediscovery of hidden gems, particularly of the French Baroque....Stubbs and O’Dette lead a beautifully finessed orchestral reading, most naturally engineered, and with fascinating booklet notes. Lovers of the French Baroque need not hesitate."

- Limelight

LAMPE | The Dragon of Wantley | Boston Early Music Festival

"an essentially faultless performance". "Although an unabashed satire of Italianate Baroque opera, with all

of the expected pomposity and rigid conventions, Stephen Stubbs, Paul O’Dette, and company honored the material with tender care....[and] the cast and orchestra embraced the work’s wide emotional breadth. Stubbs, conducting from his seat with his guitar in hand, led the cast in a breath-taking, dissonant, almost out-of-time choral plea to Moore of Moore-Hall to vanquish the dragon (“O Save Us All!). We felt the desperation and terror in our viscera....Every decision, from Jacqueline Quintal’s costumes and Melinda Sullivan’s choreography, down to the minutiae of the instrumental articulation, allowed the elegant show to burst with humor and pathos." – Boston Musical Intelligencer

LULLY | Psyché | Boston Early Music Festival

“This Psyché makes its audience feel like members of a 17th-century French royal court, experiencing its art as an immediate, living creation. There is nothing modern about it, which is what makes it special. …Director Gilbert Blin, choreographer Lucy Graham and musical directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs balanced text, singing, dancing and staging to create an unusually organic and vivid performance. …The continuo players, including Mr. O’Dette and Mr. Stubbs playing theorbos and guitars, had the majority of the work, as they accompanied all the arias and recitatives, and their close musical connection to the singers gave the performance an improvisatory vigor.” — Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal

MONTEVERDI | L’Incoronazione di Poppea | Boston Early Music Festival

“Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs led a 10-member baroque consort that played with astonishing imagination, verve and virtuosity.” — Geraldine Freedman, The Daily Gazette

“Boston Early Music Festival’s production of this work lives up to the artistic scruples that have made BEMF this country’s most important purveyors of seventeenth-century opera….Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, the heart of the continuo, have devoted their professional lives to the ancient art of illuminative accompaniment….One easily understands the international acclaim BEMF has garnered. After four years of following these performers as they eagerly mount these ancient dramas, I am always astonished at their musical excellence and enterprise—something unprecedented in the world of early music.”

— Seth Lachterman

                     | L’Incoronazione di Poppea, Ulisse, Orfeo | Boston Early Music Festival, 2015

"the vocal soloists are excellent, and the orchestra, with the lutenists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs as music directors and the violinist Robert Mealy as concertmaster, is superb."

— James R. Oestreich, The New York Times

"The music co-directors, celebrated lutenists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, and their remarkable players, provide the highest level of musical sophistication.” — Lloyd Schwartz, The Artery

                     | L’Orfeo | De Nederlandse Opera

“Conductor Stephen Stubbs and his musicians of Tragicomedia and Concerto Palatino delivered a noble performance concerning the use of instrumentation and musical choices. Through contrasting instrumental colors he achieves an impression of rich orchestration. This gives the harmonic movement an emotional charge.” — Het Muziektheater

“Stephen Stubbs and his Tragicomedia/Concerto Palatino took command of the L’Orfeo, Stubbs playing from both harpsichord and his best known instrument, the theorbo. His other harpsichordist was none other than Christophe Rousset, making up the nine other continuo players. They were supported at dramatic moments by another 16 players of brass, winds and strings….This band offered subtle and virtuosic playing at the service of the drama.” — Sue Loder, Opera Today

                     | L’Orfeo | Boston Early Music Festival

“…this was a fleet “Orfeo,” short on draggy vocal display, long on drama and feeling. I was startled by the energy the Nymphs and Shepherds put into their chorus “Vieni, Imeneo, deh, vieni” (“Come, Hymen, oh come”), which usually sounds like a hymn. I was pleased by the care the instrumental ensemble took to vary the sensibility of the ritornellos in between La Musica’s vocal stanzas. The action took place all around the instrumentalists (which had the effect of integrating them) and also on risers behind them….BEMF’s “Orfeo” was equally rewarding as music and drama. — Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Globe

                     | The Return of Ulysses | Pacific Operaworks | Seattle, San Francisco

“Launching any enterprise today is a bold gesture, but an opera company devoted to 17th- and early 18th-century opera, as well as contemporary opera, even more so. Yes, visionaries have always done what they want to do when the moment is ripe for them, regardless of the circumstances.  Such is Stephen Stubbs….” — R. M. Campbell, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“The return of Stephen Stubbs to Seattle has reached a climax with the launching of his new company, Pacific Operaworks. Those who witnessed the maiden voyage Wednesday night of Monteverdi’s opera, “The Return of Ulysses”, will be congratulating themselves for years to come….It came as no surprise that the musical portion is also sublime. Stubbs, both as director and player of the chitarrone, specializes in this very literature. He leads a group that can only be described as all-stars.”

— John Sutherland, The Seattle Times

                     | Vespers of 1610 | Pacific MusicWorks/Seattle Baroque Orchestra/Concerto Palatino

“The full Monte at St. James”
"The interpretation led by Stephen Stubbs left no question as to the power of Monteverdi's masterpiece to thrill, delight, and move contemporary audiences...His approach wonderfully served the dramatic character of the music. What emerged marvelously in Stubbs's conception overall was the essential theatricality of the Vespers...Score another triumph for Stubbs...”  — Thomas May, Crosscut

                    “A 'Vespers' for the ages at St. James Cathedral”
"This was an utterly thrilling Vespers, of a quality you are unlikely ever to encounter anywhere else in the world. [Stubbs's] direction was as lively and spontaneous as it was meticulous in detail. He drew superb playing from the Concerto Palatino ensemble and from members of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra....The man is a genius. Oh, I meant Stubbs. But Monteverdi, too, was no slouch."

— Bernard Jacobson, The Seattle Times

“Early church music made dramatic”
the focus was no longer just beautiful sounds - it was drama. Words were no longer mere carriers of lovely tones - they had taken over, a kind of musical coup, if you will, making their own dramatic meaning the center of attention. We had moved from smooth sensual seduction to opera….Seattle native Stephen Stubbs showed his attention to the emotional intensity of Monteverdi's setting, drawing great contrasts in dynamics as well as expressive force behind the delivery of words. The excellent singers were animated and emotionally involved with every syllable…This Vespers whipped up a lot of excitement. Since this was the second time in two years that Stubbs and his forces have presented this work at St. James, one wonders if it is to become a Messiah-like tradition. We can hope so. — Rod Parke, Seattle Gay News                    

         | Vespers of 1610 | Pacific MusicWorks | Portland, OR
“It was thoroughly enthralling, easily one of the top performances of any kind in Portland this year…Conductor, lutenist and PMW artistic director Stephen Stubbs has three decades' experience with the piece with forces both large and small, and for this performance he assembled about the smallest possible ensemble of unquestionably first-rate personnel….The singing was superb, with nine distinctive, well-trained voices that blended beautifully.… there wasn't a weak voice among them, and their musicality shone both alone and in ensemble.…as with the singers, there wasn't a weak link in the orchestra…Stubbs led with a light touch and unflagging pacing, deftly negotiating the many transitions of harmony, rhythm and configuration. To listeners accustomed to the Vespers in more monumental dress, PMW's unassailable performance may have seemed unorthodox, but anyone who first encountered the piece Sunday afternoon may rightly have a hard time imagining it done any other way.” — James McQuillen, The Oregonian

“Pacific Musicworks Lets “Glorious Music” of the Monteverdi Vespers Sing”
This group, headed by lutenist/conductor/Baroque opera director Stephen Stubbs, has connections all over the world, and such is Stubbs’s reputation that he can bring in stellar performers from almost anywhere. Right from the start, the performance’s high caliber became obvious, with Daniels’ clarion tenor ringing out, the high cornettos sounding like velvet and the pure sound of the two sopranos hanging in the air. With the chorus (all nine soloists singing together) and all the musicians, the rich sound of the whole filled the cathedral, and having a small group performing this big work made complete sense.”

— Pippa Kiraly, The Sunbreak

                     | Vespers of 1610 | Boston Early Music Festival, 2015

"It was performed throughout with the greatest sensitivity, enhancing but never obscuring the voices in small-group numbers and providing sturdy support in large-group concerted pieces. Stephen Stubbs conducted with a sure sense of pacing and continuity... one of the best 1610 Vespers performances I have ever heard." — Virginia Newes, The Boston Musical Intelligencer

MOZART | The Magic Flute | Pacific MusicWorks

“Stephen Stubbs, the Pacific MusicWorks director who just won a conducting Grammy, presides over a highly accomplished period orchestra uniting professional and student players. It was clear from the spirited, well-shaped overture that Stubbs’ sense of pacing and the expertise of his musicians would be a major boon for this production.” — Melinda Bargreen, Seattle Times

“Overall, instead of hearing this music as, say, an “anticipation” of Fidelio, a harbinger of the future, Stubbs revealed Mozart’s achievement as an astonishing leap forward that reimagines and remixes gestures from the Baroque and opera buffa.” — Thomas May, Musical America

“Conductor Stubbs led his orchestra of thirty-eight – an even balance between Pacific MusicWorks players and UW music students – in a round, rich, lively account of Mozart’s familiar music, made warmer by the addition of thematic interludes played by the woodwinds to cover frequent scene changes.”

— Sharon Cumberland, Seattle Gay News

SEBASTIANI | St. Matthew Passion | Boston Early Music Festival

“BEMF’s polished and lovingly executed performance with period instruments not only made a strong case for the piece. But also it provided rare insight into opera’s early sources…Stubbs shrewdly replaced the spoken interludes with musical ones.” — Harlow Robinson, The Boston Globe

CD REVIEWS

“Teatro Lyrico” | ECM New Series 1893  (CD 476 3101)

“Stephen Stubbs has put together a risky but irresistible project of a kind that has lately become standard operating procedure at ECM. Instead of a traditional early-music program Mr. Stubbs and his period-instrument chamber band, Teatro Lirico, offer an extended fantasy built on musical free association. Though the program is essentially Italian, it ends with dances from a 17th-century Slovak manuscript….In the improvised pieces, the musicians work together with the unity of purpose a listener expects of a good jazz ensemble.” — Allan Kozinn, The New York Times