About this Artist

JONI LYNN STESHKO currently serves as the Associate Conductor of the Colburn Chamber Orchestra at the Colburn School for the Performing Arts, where she is also co-director of the Colburn String Orchestra. In addition, she is the conductor of the New California Conservatory Orchestra in Buena Park. In 2000/2001 she was Guest Conductor at Chapman University, where she conducted the Chapman Symphony Orchestra, the Chapman University Chamber Orchestra, and the Chapman Opera, and taught orchestra conducting. She has served as Manager of Orchestra Programs at the USC Thornton School of Music. In addition, she has served as assistant conductor of the Santa Barbara Symphony. For three years, she was the Assistant Conductor of the USC Symphony, the USC Chamber Orchestra, and USC Opera, as well as conductor of the USC Conductors' Orchestra.

Steshko has conducted orchestras throughout North America and in St. Petersburg, Russia, including the Santa Barbara Symphony, the St. Petersburg (Russia) Congress Orchestra, and the Huntsville (Canada) Festival Orchestra. She has conducted university and conservatory orchestras at the University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University (Fullerton), as well as the Irvine Youth Symphony and the orchestra of the California State University Northridge Youth Academy.

Steshko is a graduate of the renowned conducting program of the University of Southern California, where she studied with Daniel Lewis. Other conducting studies were with Murry Sidlin of the Aspen Music Festival, John Farrer of the Bakersfield Symphony, and Jon Robertson of UCLA. In addition, she has studied choral conducting with the late Roger Wagner and opera with William Vendice of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

In 1991 Steshko was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study at the Stravinsky Archives in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. In 2000, she received her Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from UCLA with her dissertation on Igor Stravinsky's Firebird ballet and suites. An outgrowth of the dissertation will be a new, critical edition of the 1919 Firebird Suite to be published by Schott Music in Mainz, Germany.