Daniel Stewart, Conductor, Composer, and Violist, is the Music Director of the Santa Cruz Symphony, and former Assistant Conductor with The Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Stewart's first four seasons in Santa Cruz have led to unprecedented critical acclaim, including the Peninsula Reviews' assertion that "the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Stewart has now developed into the finest musical ensemble South of San Francisco and North of Los Angeles." 

The recipient of the 2010 Aspen Music Festival's James Conlon Conducting Prize, Mr. Stewart has conducted orchestras including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Hessischer Rundfunk Orchester, the Frankfurt Opern Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the Saint-Louis Symphony and the Boston Ballet. He has previously served as Cover Conductor with the Atlanta Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and the Saint-Louis Symphony, assisting conductors including Thomas Adès, Charles Dutoit, James Levine, Kurt Masur, David Robertson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 2012, Mr. Stewart was invited by James Levine to become the first conductor of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. In 2013, he made his acclaimed Lincoln Center debut in a Metropolitan Opera produced concert of comic operas by Stravinsky, Mozart, Donizetti and Berlioz. He has conducted the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and soloists in a comprehensive range of repertoire.

Mr. Stewart has worked closely with contemporary composers such as the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, HK Gruber, and particularly Thomas Adès, whom he assisted in preparing the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Aspects of Adès" festival in 2011. An avid composer himself, Daniel Stewart's compositions have been performed at venues including the Aspen Music Festival, Tribeca New Music Festival, and Verbier Festival.

Mr. Stewart is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller, with additional studies with Sir Simon Rattle, Christoph Eschenbach, and Alan Gilbert. As a violist, Mr. Stewart has has concertized frequently as soloist, and served as principal violist of numerous ensembles, including the New World Symphony, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and for six years with the Verbier Festival and Chamber Orchestras. He has also performed with the San Francisco Symphony, recorded for EMI with Maxim Vengerov, and toured extensively in over 40 countries.