In February Stephen Ellery will conduct the Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir with soloists Piotr Plawner and Piotr Rozanski. The program will include Magnificat, Dopo la vittoria and Credo by Arvo Part as well as the Philip Glass Violin Concerto.

Stephen Ellery was invited last June to end the season in Bialystok, Poland, with Puccini's La Boheme and he is a regular guest of the MusicaSantangelo Opera Company in Japan. Recent productions of Magic Flute, Pagliacci, Suor'Anelica, Serva Padrona, Figaro and Cosi Fa Tutte have had resounding success. He returns in May to conduct Don Giovani and piano concertos by Grieg and Chopin in Tokyo. In June he will conduct Poulenc Piano Concerto and Debussy L'apres midi d'une faune in Osaka.

In 1999 he won 3rd prize as well as the Best Artist and received the Polish Radio Prize at the Fitelberg International Conducting Competition in Poland and this led to opportunities to conduct in Kielce, Olsztyn, Radom and Plock. He is a regular guest of the Filharmonia Slaska in Katowice. In April he gave a concert in memory of the late Pope John Paul II with the Bialystock Philharmonic and pianist Kevin Kenner, with whom he has also performed concertos by Mozart and Ravel.

For 16 years he has been a regular guest of the Sinfonica Nacional de Peru and has also conducted the Sinfonica de Arequipa, Sinfonica de Trujillo and the Filarmonica de la Ciudad de Mexico. He was 2nd conductor of the Pacific Ocean Symphony in Vladivostok 1995-6 and 2nd conductor at the Yakutsk State Opera 1996-7. He gave the Russian premier of Walton's 1st Symphony conducting the Krasnoyarsk Academic Symphony. Stephen has worked with major orchestras in Japan including the Tokyo City Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic and the Gunma Symphony.

Stephen Ellery studied conducting with Jerzy Katlewicz in Krakow (Poland 1988-91) and Ilya Musin in St Petersburg (Russia 1991-95).