About

Jan Wagner’s international conducting career spans over 30 years with performances with some of the world’s greatest orchestras on some of the world’s most prominent stages in four different continents. 

He launched his professional conducting career after winning First Prize at the 1995 Nicolai Malko International Conductors’ Competition in Denmark and was named, soon thereafter, Principal Conductor of the Odense Symphony Orchestra which he led in more than 200 performances conducting more than 200 different works both on subscription concerts and on two separate tours to the U.S.A. and Spain during his tenure between 1997 and 2002.

Simultaneous with his appointment in Denmark, Jan Wagner regularly conducted all the major Danish orchestras including the Danish National Radio Symphony, the Danish Radio Sinfonietta (including two international tours to Paris and Sweden), the Aarhus Symphony, the Aalborg Symphony, the Danish Royal Theater, the Copenhagen Philharmonic and Collegium Musicum.

Throughout Scandinavia, he regularly conducted the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Oslo Radio Orchestra, the Tampere Symphony, the Malmö Symphony, the Stavanger Symphony, the Helsingborg Symphony, and the Norrköping Symphony.

Other notable orchestras he has worked with in Europe include the Royal Philharmonic and the Halle Orchestra in England, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and the Hannover Radio Symphony in Germany. He also has guest conducted the West Australian Symphony (Perth) and the Melbourne Symphony in Australia.   

In North America, Wagner has appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Jacksonville Symphony, the Aspen Festival Orchestra and the Aspen Chamber Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Minnesota Opera on a U.S.A. tour of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Williamsburg Symphony, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra with which he appeared as a regular guest conductor between 2016 and 2022.

In South America he has frequently guest conducted the Philharmonic Orchestra of the U.N.A.M in Mexico City, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela, that country's national symphony orchestra with which he appeared as a regular guest conductor between 1998 and 2010 and with which he released the orchestra’s first recording with the Naxos label with works by Evencio Castellanos. 

Throughout his career Jan Wagner has collaborated with many distinguished artists such as clarinetists Richard Stolzman and Sabine Meyer, singers Anna Larsson, Bo Skovhus and Yvonne Kenny, cellists Ralph Kirshbaum, David Geringas, and Andres Diaz, violist Nobuko Imai, pianists John Browning, Ivan Moravec, Grigory Sokolov, Andrei Gavrilov, Nikolai Demidenko, Vanessa Perez and John O’Conor, violinists Mark Kaplan, Julian Rachlin, Arve Tellefsen, Anton Kontra, Kristof Barati and Anne Akiko Meyers, and trumpeters Håkan Hardenberger, Jens Lindemann and Wynton Marsalis.

Contemporary composers with whom Jan Wagner has collaborated include Danish composers Poul Ruders (world premiere performance and recording of his Guitar Concerto), Per Nørgård, Anders Nordentoft,  American composers William Bolcom, Kevin Puts and Richard Wilson, David Lang, Jennifer Higdon, John Corigliano, Joseph Schwantner, Vivian Fung and the legendary Wynton Marsalis with whom he collaborated in the world premiere performance of the revised and complete Blues Symphony at the Strathmore Music Center with the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra (SCSO).

Jan Wagner has also been very active recording for labels such as Denon (Stravinsky’s The Rite of Springand Debussy's L'apres-midi d'un faune-DVD audio), DaCapo (works by Paul von Klenau which received a Danish Grammy nomination), Classico (world premiere of Poulenc’s Les animaux modele), Bridge Records(world premiere of Poul Ruders’ Guitar Concerto, works by Ginastera, Villa-Lobos, including the world premiere of Villa-Lobos’ ballet Emperor Jones, and Carl Nielsen’s Violin Concerto), Silverline (Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben and Vier letzte Lieder-DVD audio) and Danacord (Mussorgsky-Ravel’s Pictures at an Exhibition) and the Naxos label with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela as part of a series called “Latin-American Classics” with works by Evencio Castellanos. 

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Concurrent with his professional activities, Jan Wagner held the position of Professor of Music and Director of Orchestral Activities for 21 years at Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University. During his tenure there he served as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra (SCSO) and of Shenandoah Conservatory Opera program. With the SCSO he undertook three international tours performing in premiere venues in Spain (2014) and Argentina (2017 and 2023). He also served as the artistic director and conductor of the Shenandoah Conservatory Performing Arts Festival, Shenandoah Performs, between 2004 and 2008. He has been awarded the title of Professor Emeritus at Shenandoah University

Jan Wagner is a graduate of the Academy of Music in Vienna, Austria, where he completed his conducting studies with Karl Österreicher and Günther Theuring and opera coaching with Harald Goertz. He furthered his conducting studies with Murry Sidlin and Lawrence Foster as a Fellow Conductor at the Aspen Music Festival and has participated in master classes with Robert Spano, John Nelson, Leonard Slatkin and James Conlon. 

Following his studies, he was the Top-Prize Winner at the 1994 Leopold Stokowski International Conducting Competition in New York and was the recipient of the 1994 Conducting Prize at the Aspen Music Festival. He has also served as assistant conductor/vocal coach to John DeMain at Houston Grand Opera, to Lawrence Foster at the Aspen Music Festival, assistant/apprentice conductor under Edo de Waart and the Minnesota Orchestra and as assistant/cover conductor to Kurt Masur at the New York Philharmonic.