Euan Shields, Conductor
Euan Shields was the winner of the Siemens Hallé International Conducting Competition 2023. He will begin a 2-year engagement as Assistant Conductor under Sir Mark Elder for the Hallé Orchestra and Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra in Fall 2023. He also was a recipient of the Solti Foundation’s 2023 Career Assistance Award.
In May 2023, Shields completed a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting at the Juilliard School under the guidance of David Robertson. He completed a Bachelor in Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he studied cello with Antonio Lysy and orchestral conducting with Neal Stulberg.
Shields is a 25-year-old Japan-born American conductor, who is known for his emotionally charged performances, technical skill, and passion for collaboration. Among the orchestras Shields has conducted are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Hallé Orchestra, South Denmark Philharmonic, the Juilliard Lab Orchestra, and Juilliard’s AXIOM Ensemble. Recently he has worked as the assistant and cover conductor for John Adams, Xian Zhang, Roderick Cox, Giancarlo Guerrero, Jeffrey Milarsky, and Jonathon Heyward.
In June 2022, he was a finalist in the 5th Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition in Monaco and conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. Also, he was a semifinalist in the Llíria City of Music Conducting Competition in 2021.
Shields has attended conducting masterclasses worldwide, studying with teachers such as Nicolás Pasquet, Johannes Schlaefli, Jorma Panula, and Sian Edwards.
Born in 1998 in Osaka, Japan, he learned the cello since early childhood. He moved to the U.S. when he was 13 and joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Shields first became interested in becoming a conductor in his early teens, founding and conducting a chamber youth orchestra in San Francisco. Shields lives in New York City but will be moving to Manchester, UK in Fall 2023 to begin his new role at the Hallé Orchestra.