Conner Gray Covington most recently conducted the North Carolina Symphony for “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” In Concert in 2023.

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 2023/24 season, he debuts with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, returns to the Portland Symphony Orchestra in Maine and Utah Symphony, makes his Utah Opera debut, and collaborates on Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with Washington National Opera at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A four-time recipient of a Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation U.S., Covington was featured in the 2016 Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview.

In 2014, Covington was selected to attend the Salzburg Festival as a recipient of the Ansbacher Fellowship for Young Conductors. In 2012, he competed in the Malko Conducting Competition in Copenhagen. He also worked with the New Japan Philharmonic in the 2012 Tokyo International Conducting Competition and advanced to the semi-final round.

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. He also spent two summers as a student at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors.

Born in Louisiana, Covington grew up in East Tennessee and began playing the violin at age 11. He completed high school at 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.