American conductor, Anthony Parnther, is the son of immigrants. His father emigrated to the United States from Kingston, Jamaica at the height of the Korean War and served in the US Navy. His mother came to America from the remote Pacific microstate of Samoa. Anthony was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and the family eventually relocated to Washington D.C. and New York City before settling in central Virginia where Anthony became active in the instrumental music program. While in high school, Anthony learned the bassoon and the tuba and developed secondary interests in acting, singing, forensics, and creative writing before deciding to enter university fully committed to music.
Anthony is Music Director of the Southeast Symphony, an appointment he has held since 2010. The Southeast Symphony is recognized as America's most diverse symphonic institution and in 2018, celebrates its 70th anniversary. He was profiled by Los Angeles' KCET/ TV as a "Local Hero" in 2015 during black history month for his contributions to classical music, community outreach, and passionate advocacy for the performance of works by minority and women composers. In 2018, he was featured on the BBC 3's In Tune with Sean Rafferty.
As a conductor, Parnther has concertized on five continents and has garnered considerable praise for his orchestral leadership and interpretative prowess. Only two maestros have had the distinction of opening Southbank Centre's venerable Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, England. Benjamin Britten conducted the inaugural concert in 1967; Anthony Parnther had the honor of re-opening the newly renovated hall 50 years later (after three years closure for renovations) with the Chineke! Orchestra. The historic concert, which was broadcast live internationally on the BBC3, was met with universal critical acclaim by London's active media and press.
Anthony is a leading advocate for the performance of orchestral works by minority and women composers, both of whom are widely neglected in America's leading concert halls. Lauded for his championship of this genre, Anthony has successfully commissioned, reconstructed, performed and/or recorded over 100 works in this genre. This list includes scholarly restorations, reconstructions, performances and premieres of works by Florence Price, Zenobia Powell Perry, George Walker, Wynton Marsalis, Margaret Bonds, Renee Baker, John Wineglass, Gary Powell Nash, William Grant Still, Adolphus Hailstork, Duke Ellington, Marian Harrison, and Samuel Coleridge Taylor.
In 2018, Anthony conducted the world premiere of James Newton's 'Glimpses of the Garden of Eden' at Schoenberg Hall in Los Angeles. He conducted the premiere performance of Daniel Kidane's 'Dream Song' (based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech) which was commissioned specially for the reopening of Queen Elizabeth Hall and performed on the 50th anniversary of MLK's internment. This work was recorded for release on the NMC label. Also in 2018, he recently recorded works by a series of Afro-British composers. These sessions, which took place at All Saint's in London, includes Errollyn Wallen's 'Concerto Grosso,' James Wilson's 'The Green Fuse,' and Philip Herbert's
'Elegy: In Memoriam Stephen Lawrence.'
Anthony is in demand as a session conductor in the LA recording studios and led the Hollywood Studio Symphony on all the historic Los Angeles scoring stages, including 20th Century Fox, MGM/ Sony, Warner Brothers, and Capitol Records. He Anthony has collaborated with a who's who of artists from every musical genre, including Joshua Bell, Frederica von Stade, Roderick Williams, Cirque de la Symphonie, RZA, Wu-Tang Clan, the Canadian Brass, Kanye West, Wes Borland, Imagine Dragons and Rihanna.
League of Legends©, with its over 100 million active players worldwide, is the most played video game on earth and Anthony has served as it's Principal Conductor since 2014. These live concerts attract some of the most massive crowds an orchestra has concertized for. With live audiences upwards of fifty-thousand in attendance, the live broadcasts of the LOL World Finals opening and closing ceremonies outpace the World Series with an average of thirty-five to forty million viewers worldwide. Anthony has led international League of Legends mega-concert productions globally, including the World Cup Stadium (Seoul, South Korea), the Palau Sant Jordi (Barcelona, Spain), the Water Cube and Birds Nest National Stadium (Beijing, China), and the Staples Center (Los Angeles, CA).
Anthony previously served as Music Director of the Orange County Symphony (Anaheim, CA) and the Inland Valley Symphony. (now the Temecula Valley Symphony) In 2008, Anthony founded the Orange County Wind Symphony, which was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall. In 2015, he established the Wind Orchestra of the West, comprised of musicians from Southern California's preeminent orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Symphony, and Hollywood Studio Symphony.
A dedicated educator, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2010 - 2015 where he was the Music Director of the nationally acclaimed Young Musicians Choral Orchestra. From 2015-2017, Mr. Parnther was named Artist in Residence at the Oakwood School. He taught at Fullerton College from 2008 - 2010. Prior to moving to California, Anthony led the Opera Workshop, Concert Band, Athletic Bands, and the Marching Buccaneers at East Tennessee State University. Anthony studied orchestral conducting at Northwestern University with Victor Yampolsky and at Yale University with Lawrence Leighton Smith.
He also received guidance and mentorship from mentorships with Cliff Colnot, W. Francis McBeth, and Frank Battisti. He resides in Los Angeles.