Conductor
Simon Lipskar is the Conductor of the NJYS Youth Orchestra, having previously conducted the NJYS Philharmonia from 2004 to 2006. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Robert Spano, as well as for a number of other orchestras and opera companies, including the Bronx Opera, the Sarasota Opera, and the Oakland-East Bay Symphony (under Michael Morgan). He was a member of Tanglewood's Conductor's Seminar, where he took part in master classes led by Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Andre Previn, and Joseph Silverstein. He received his master's in orchestral conducting from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where he was awarded the Conducting Department Award in Honor of Outstanding Contributions to the Conservatory Ensembles. A graduate of Yale University, he founded the Yale Undergraduate Opera along with soprano Sari Gruber, conducting an all-undergraduate performance of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. A Juilliard Pre-college violinist, pianist, and composer, he was an award-winning chamber musician as a teenager, performing in Alice Tully Hall among other venues.