Conner Gray Covington most recently conducted the North Carolina Symphony for Jurassic Park In Concert in May, 2026.
Described as “a musician who lives the music” by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Conner Gray Covington served for four years with the Utah Symphony as Associate Conductor and as Principal Conductor of the Deer Valley Music Festival. In the 2025/26 season, he has made debuts with the Boston Pops, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, and New Jersey Symphony. Return engagements included San Francisco Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, and Tucson Symphony Orchestra.
Other recent guest conducting has included appearances with the Hawai’i, Knoxville, Tallahassee, and Vancouver symphony orchestras and San Diego Symphony as well as the Bellingham Festival of Music and the Grand Teton Music Festival. Operatic engagements have included Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for the New England Conservatory of Music, the world premiere of Rene Orth’s Empty the House at the Curtis Opera Theatre and Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro for his debut with Utah Opera. Covington has also conducted more than 20 feature films with orchestras.
A five-time recipient of a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation U.S., Covington was featured in the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. He was selected to attend the Salzburg Festival in 2014 as a recipient of the Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors. In 2012, he competed in the Malko Conducting Competition in Copenhagen.
Covington studied conducting at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he worked closely with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, with whom he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2016, and the Curtis Opera Theater. He also studied at the Eastman School of Music, where he earned the Walter Hagen Conducting Prize. For two summers, he attended the Aspen Conducting Academy at the Aspen Music Festival and School.
Born in Louisiana, Covington graduated from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. He then went on to study violin and conducting at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in violin performance.
