Sarah Hatsuko Hicks (born ) is a Japanese-born American orchestral conductor. Since 2009, she has been the Principal Conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall for the

Minnesota Orchestra The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded originally as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall. History Th ...

, and also serves as Staff Conductor at the

Curtis Institute of Music The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia. It offers a performance diploma, a Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, and a Professional Studies Certificate in opera. All students attend on a full scholarshi ...

Early life and education

Hicks, a

Japanese-American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in ranking to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

, was born in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

to Richard and Kazuko Hicks; her father was an American lawyer and her mother a classical Japanese dancer. She was raised in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

, where she trained as a

violist The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the v ...

and

pianist A pianist ( , ) is a musician who plays the piano. A pianist's repertoire may include music from a diverse variety of styles, such as traditional classical music, jazz piano, jazz, blues piano, blues, and popular music, including rock music, ...

, graduating from the

Punahou School Punahou School (known as Oahu College until 1934) is a private, co-educational, college preparatory school in Honolulu, Hawaii. More than 3,700 students attend the school from kindergarten through 12th grade. The school was established by P ...

in 1989. In 1993, Hicks graduated

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

from

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

with an A.B. in music, winning the Thomas Hoopes Prize for undergraduate theses and the Doris Cohen Levy Prize for conducting. She then studied at the

, winning a Presser Award and graduating with an Artist's Degree in conducting.

Career

Hicks previously served as Associate Conductor of the

North Carolina Symphony The North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is an American orchestra based in Raleigh, North Carolina, with sixty-six full-time musicians. The orchestra performs in Meymandi Concert Hall and performs occasionally with the Carolina Ballet and the Opera Co ...

, Associate Conductor of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Resident Conductor of the Florida Philharmonic, and Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Singers, the chorus of the

Philadelphia Orchestra The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription concerts, n ...

. After graduating from Curtis, she was for one season assistant conductor to the

Verbier Festival The Verbier Festival is a two week annual international music festival which is held in late July and early August in the mountain resort of Verbier southeast of Lausanne, Switzerland. Begun by Swedish expatriate in 1994, it has attracted int ...

Orchestra, training with

James Levine James Lawrence Levine ( ; June 23, 1943 – March 9, 2021) was an American conductor and pianist. He was music director of the Metropolitan Opera from 1976 to 2016. He was terminated from all his positions and affiliations with the Met on March ...

. As a guest conductor, Hicks has appeared with the

Chicago Symphony Orchestra The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Theodore Thomas in 1891, the ensemble has been based in the Symphony Center since 1904 and plays a summer season at the Ravinia F ...

San Francisco Symphony The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley, San Francisco, Hayes Valley ne ...

Cleveland Orchestra The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the " Big Five". T ...

Boston Pops The Boston Pops is an American orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts, specializing in light classical and popular music. The orchestra's current music director is Keith Lockhart. Founded in 1885 as an offshoot of the Boston Symphony Orc ...

Atlanta Symphony Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

Florida Orchestra The Florida Orchestra is an American orchestra based in the tri-city area of Tampa, Clearwater and St. Petersburg, Florida. It was founded as the Florida Gulf Coast Symphony upon the 1968 merger of the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the T ...

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic (LA Phil) is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. The orchestra holds a regular concert season from October until June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from ...

Milwaukee Symphony The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The orchestra performs primarily at the Bradley Symphony Center in Allen-Bradley Hall. The orchestra also serves as the orchestra for Florenti ...

Detroit Symphony Orchestra The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Detroit, Michigan. Its primary performance venue is Orchestra Hall (Detroit, Michigan), Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown, Detroit, ...

National Symphony Orchestra The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1930 by cellist Hans Kindler, its principal performing venue is the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The NSO regularly ...

Danish National Symphony Orchestra The Danish National Symphony Orchestra (DNSO; ), is a Danish orchestra based in Copenhagen. The DNSO is the principal orchestra of DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation). The DRSO is based at the Koncerthuset () concert hall in Copenhagen. Histo ...

Melbourne Symphony The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) is an Australian orchestra based in Melbourne. The MSO is resident at Hamer Hall. The MSO has its own choir, the MSO Chorus, following integration with the Melbourne Chorale in 2008. The MSO relies on fun ...

Tokyo Philharmonic The is recognized as the oldest symphony orchestra in Japan. It was founded in 1911 and debuted at the original Matsuzakaya store in Nagoya as the . It relocated to Tokyo in 1938. As of 2024, it has 166 members. The orchestra plays frequently a ...

, St. Petersburg Philharmonic,

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a music organisation based in Liverpool, England, that manages a professional symphony orchestra, a concert venue, and extensive programmes of learning through music. Its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmo ...

, the Orchestra of

Teatro La Fenice Teatro La Fenice (; "The Phoenix (mythology), Phoenix Theatre") is a historic opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of "the most famous and renowned landmarks in the history of Italian theatre" and in the history of opera as a whole. Especial ...

, the Orchestra Society of Philadephia, and the

Toronto Symphony Orchestra The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is a Canadian orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario. Founded in 1906, the TSO gave regular concerts at Massey Hall until 1982, and since then has performed at Roy Thomson Hall. The TSO also manages the Toron ...

. She has collaborated with many artists including

Dmitri Hvorostovsky Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky (, ; 16 October 1962 – 22 November 2017) was a Russian operatic baritone. Early life and education Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia during a time when the city was mostly closed to foreigner ...

Rufus Wainwright Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright (born July 22, 1973) is a Canadian and American singer, songwriter, and composer. He has recorded eleven studio albums and numerous tracks on compilations and film soundtracks. He has also written two classical opera ...

Jaime Laredo Jaime Laredo (born June 7, 1941) is an American violinist and Conducting, conductor. He was the conductor and music director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, and began his musical career when he was five years old. Laredo was born in Cochabamb ...

Hilary Hahn Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has performed throughout the world as a soloist with leading orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. She is an avid supporter of contemp ...

Ben Folds Benjamin Scott Folds (born September 12, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. After playing in several small independent bands throughout the late 80s and into the early 90s, Folds came to prominence as the f ...

Smokey Robinson William "Smokey" Robinson Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B and soul singer, songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. He was the founder and frontman of the pioneering Motown vocal group the Miracles, for which he ...

, and

Sting Stimulator of interferon genes (STING), also known as transmembrane protein 173 (TMEM173) and MPYS/MITA/ERIS is a regulator protein that in humans is encoded by the STING1 gene. STING plays an important role in innate immunity. STING induces typ ...

, for whom she served as conductor on the final leg of his Symphonicities Tour. In June 2012 she conducted the opening concert of the

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF; ) is an annual Russian business event for the economic sector, which has been held in Saint Petersburg, St. Petersburg since 1997, and under the auspices of the President of Russia since 2 ...

, in a program featuring

Sumi Jo Sumi Jo, OSI (; ; born 22 November 1962) is a South Korean lyric coloratura soprano known for her Grammy Award-winning interpretations of the bel canto repertoire. Life and career Early life and education Jo was born Jo Su-gyeong in Ch ...

and

Jackie Evancho Jacqueline Marie Evancho ( ; born April 9, 2000) is an American singer who gained wide recognition at an early age, singing primarily crossover music#Classical crossover, classical crossover covers. Since 2009, she has issued nine albums, a pla ...

. She has conducted some famous film music scores with the

, including a concert of masterpieces by Italian composer

Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone ( , ; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, Orchestration, orchestrator, conductor, trumpeter, and pianist who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 film score, scores for cinema and televisi ...

and his ''

Dollars Trilogy The ''Dollars Trilogy'' (), also known as the ''Man with No Name Trilogy'' (), is an Italian film series consisting of three spaghetti western films directed by Sergio Leone. The films are titled '' A Fistful of Dollars'' (1964), '' For a Few ...

'', as well as works by

Nino Rota Giovanni "Nino" Rota Rinaldi (; ; 3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed ...

. This concert was released in 2018 as an album and has been broadcast worldwide. Her other recordings include " Chime" with rap artist

Dessa Margret Wander (born May 23, 1981), better known by her stage name Dessa, is an American singer, rapper, musician, writer, and former record executive. She is a member of the indie hip hop collective Doomtree. Early life Dessa was born to Rob ...

, as well as an album of new concertos, "Triple Doubles". Hicks is a specialist in the live to film genre and since 2019 has been a consultant for Disney Concerts. Her film concerts can be found on

Disney+ The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

. She has also worked on an Intel gaming project with gamer DrLupo.

Personal life

Hicks lives in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

with her husband,

horn Horn may refer to: Common uses * Horn (acoustic), a tapered sound guide ** Horn antenna ** Horn loudspeaker ** Vehicle horn ** Train horn *Horn (anatomy), a pointed, bony projection on the head of various animals * Horn (instrument), a family ...

player Paul LaFollette, whom she met while studying at the Curtis Institute of Music.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hicks, Sarah 1970s births Living people Japanese women conductors (music) 21st-century Japanese conductors (music) American women conductors (music) Harvard University alumni Curtis Institute of Music alumni Musicians from Honolulu Classical musicians from Hawaii Musicians from Tokyo 21st-century American conductors (music) Year of birth missing (living people)