Scott Lawton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scott Lawton (born 1960 in New Castle, Pennsylvania) is an American conductor based in Germany. He has served as the Principal Conductor of the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg in Potsdam since 1999. His activities with the Filmorchester include performances of silent films, studio recordings for film and television productions and orchestral concerts.
Since 2004 he has also served as music director of the summer festival in Bad Gandersheim and was appointed in 2005 conductor of the LPO NRW, a professional symphonic wind orchestra based in Wuppertal.
During his high school years, Lawton attended programs of the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts and the summer program of the Berklee School of Music. His university studies led to degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Cincinnati. For four summers in the mid-80s, he conducted at the Ohio Light Opera. Following to his Cincinnati studies, he worked with Vincent Persichetti in preparing the world premiere in Philadelphia of the opera "The Sibyl". During a subsequent year of graduate studies at the Louisiana State University, he assisted opera singer Martina Arroyo as she began her teaching career.
Prior to working with the Filmorchester he was staff conductor at the opera houses in Saarbrücken, Bielefeld and Trier. He also led major musical productions of The Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and 42nd Street in Vienna, Miss Saigon in Stuttgart, Cyrano in Amsterdam and Chicago in Berlin, Munich, Basel and Düsseldorf. At the Wiener Kammeroper he conducted productions of The Marriage of Figaro and Rigoletto.
An advocate of genre-crossing symphonic projects, he has worked closely together with Omara Portuondo and the Buena Vista Social Club, Udo Lindenberg, K...! and Joy Denalane. With Scorpions' "Moment of Glory" symphonic program he has toured Russia and the Baltic countries. In 2005 he led a tour of symphonic film music with legendary UFA film star Johannes Heesters. He has conducted the annual televised José Carreras Benefit Gala in Leipzig since 2000; during the same year he began a yearly collaboration with the Berlin music festival Classic Open Air am Gendarmenmarkt. A series of crossover concerts in Potsdam's Nikolaisaal featured most recently in October 2006 a project with the Motion Trio.
As a guest conductor he has led the Kölner Rundfunkorchester, Gürzenich Orchester Köln, Wuppertaler Sinfoniker, Saarländisches Staatsorchester and the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester.
He has led premiere performances of orchestral works by Franz Waxman (reconstruction of the original music to the film "Liliom"), Sir Malcolm Arnold ("Ballade for Piano and Orchestra" from "Stolen Face") und Ashley Irwin (new live soundtrack to Hitchcock's "The Lodger").
In addition to his conducting, he has remained active as a composer, most recently with the first production in Bad Gandersheim of Mozart in Manhattan, a chamber opera about librettist Lorenzo da Ponte after he became a resident of New York City.
