"Steven is going to be a great partner with all of us in representing the Kansas City Symphony. With his obvious experience, his ability to communicate with his audience, and the skill he demonstrated over the two days of the audition, it is clear that we have found in him a very special addition to our staff and our musical family. I am delighted to welcome him to Kansas City, and we all expect terrific things from him," said Michael Stern, Music Director.

Described as an "eloquent and decisive" conductor by the Wall Street Journal, Jarvi has become recognized as an extraordinary talent with an equal passion for the concert hall and the opera house. Jarvi is concluding his second season as Conducting Fellow with the New World Symphony in Miami Beach and also is an Associate Conductor for the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.

"We are delighted to welcome Steven Jarvi to the conducting staff of the Kansas City Symphony. Steven was outstanding in all facets of the assistant conductor audition and impressed all of us with both his musicality and his enthusiasm. In a very competitive audition, he demonstrated abilities on and off the podium that will make him a great asset to the Symphony and to our community," said Frank Byrne, Executive Director.

During the past three seasons, Jarvi has joined the New World Symphony to share subscription concerts with Roberto Abbado, Marin Alsop, Alasdair Neale, Mark Wigglesworth and Michael Tilson Thomas. He has served as a cover conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic as a competitor in the 3rd Sibelius International Conducting Competition in Helsinki, Finland. A music education advocate, he has given pre-concert lectures for the Baltimore Symphony and now leads the Concerts for Kids, Education Concerts and Community Appreciation Concert with the New World Symphony along with summer guest conducting at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont.

In the summer of 2005, as the Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, Jarvi studied with James Levine, Stefan Asbury, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Kurt Masur and conducted critically praised performances with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the TMC Chamber Orchestra and the Mark Morris Dance Group. Interested in new music and living composers, he has appeared at Tanglewood's Festival of Contemporary Music, and has collaborated with renowned American composers Augusta Read Thomas, Steven Mackey, Henri Dutilleux and John Harbison along with performing new operatic works by Brian Current, John Zorn and Stephen Andrew Taylor at New York City Opera's annual VOX: Showcasing American Composers Festival.

At the opera house, Jarvi was with the Washington National Opera as the conductor in the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program from 2004 to 2006, a position that he was personally selected by Plácido Domingo. He has held conducting positions for productions of Rigoletto, Die Tote Stadt, Tosca, Ariadne auf Naxos, La Boheme, Orlando, Le Nozze di Figaro, Porgy and Bess, Carmen, Die Zauberflöte, L'Elisir d'Amore, Lucia di Lammermoor, Romeo and Juliet, Gianni Schicchi, Suor Angelica and Hansel and Gretel with the Washington National Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Lyric Opera, Opera Company of Brooklyn and Peabody Opera. Jarvi was selected by former New York Philharmonic Music Director, Kurt Masur, to share a concert with him at the Manhattan School of Music as part of a week-long master class and traveled to Salzburg, Austria at the invitation of Claudio Abbado for study with the maestro and the Berlin Philharmonic at the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Steven Jarvi currently resides in New York City and Miami Beach and holds a Master's in Orchestral Conducting from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University, where he studied with Gustav Meier, along with a Bachelor's of Music Theory and an Artist Certificate in Conducting from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Kenneth Kiesler, Martin Katz and Jerry Blackstone.