Conductor and chorus master Susanne Sheston is currently the Chorus Master of the acclaimed Santa Fe Opera, a position she has enjoyed since 2008. As a chorus director, Sheston has collaborated throughout her career with leading operatic and symphonic conductors. Her work at Santa Fe Opera, which won Festival of Year at the International Opera Awards in November of 2022, has included choral preparations for nine world premieres and two North American premieres. Most recently she prepared the chorus for a re-imagining of Monteverdi’s Orfeo with new orchestration by Nico Muhly, and she prepared the chorus in 2021 for the premiere of M. Butterfly by Huang Rao and David Henry Hwang. In 2017, Sheston was chorus master for the multiple-Grammy-award-winning recording (Best Opera Performance, 2019) of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, recorded live at Santa Fe Opera on the Pentatone label. Her work can also be heard on the 2016 Grammy-nominated live recording of Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain.
As a conductor, Sheston recently led performances of the world premiere of Finding Wright, by Laura Kaminsky and Andrea Fellows Walters, for Dayton Opera (2022), additionally serving as the project’s musical consultant during the development of the piece. As a longtime staff conductor with Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, Sheston regularly conducted the orchestra’s annual Messiah Sing-In, numerous gala concerts, and full-scale opera productions. She also led Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder with the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, and Stephen Paulus’ Shoes for the Santa Niño with Santa Fe Opera. Sheston’s acclaimed debut with the Deer Valley Music Festival, summer home of the Utah Symphony, was a concert of Mozart and Haydn symphonic and choral works.
Previously, Sheston was the director of both the Utah Symphony Chorus and the Utah Opera Chorus in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as Chorus Master and Associate Conductor at Des Moines Metro Opera. Her tenure with the Utah Symphony brought the opportunity to prepare a wide range of major choral works with orchestra, including choral symphonies of Beethoven, Mahler, and Vaughan Williams; the Requiems of Mozart, Fauré, Brahms, and Verdi; dramatic pieces such as Berlioz's Damnation of Faust and L'Enfance du Christ, Orff's Carmina Burana, Mendelssohn's Elijah, and the Bernstein Mass; as well as less frequently heard repertoire such as Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden, Grieg's complete Peer Gynt, Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky (film), and Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, among many others. Her work as the chorus master and assistant conductor of Utah Opera, where she also contributed to artist casting assignments, included preparation of over 50 productions, spanning eleven seasons.
Both an enthusiastic teacher and keen champion of emerging and young artists, Sheston shares in the development of the world-class Apprentice Artists of the Santa Fe Opera. Previously, Dr. Sheston taught piano, choral music and music history at Simpson College for three years at the beginning of her career. She currently makes her home in Salt Lake City, Utah, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.