According to The New York Times, Paul Haas �is surely on the brink of a noteworthy career.� Time Out New York calls him a �visionary�. He is the Music Director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas (SoNA), and his guest conducting engagements have included performances with the Orchestra of St. Luke�s, San Antonio Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and the New World Symphony, among others, as well as festival appearances. Recently, Paul�s performance with the National Symphony Orchestra and Itzhak Perlman as soloist caused the Washington Post to write:

�The young conductor Paul Haas was all about fresh thinking and visceral engagement. His musicmaking�revealed a keen musical mind and an impressive feeling for the natural pulse and trajectory of a score... Haas's sensitivity to rhythmic and dynamic gradation, and his ability to marry heartfelt expression with disciplined playing from the NSO...would have been impressive in a conductor three times his age. If Thursday�s concert was an accurate barometer of his talents, Haas is headed for a significant podium career.�

As former Music Director of the renowned New York Youth Symphony, which performs regularly at Carnegie Hall, Mr. Haas and the NYYS were awarded the ASCAP-League of American Orchestras Leonard Bernstein Award for Educational Programming, the first and only time that coveted award has ever been presented to a youth orchestra. Recently, Mr. Haas was selected out of hundreds to perform in the League of American Orchestras� prestigious National Conductor Preview.

Haas also enjoys an active composing career. He conducted the premiere of his �Matthew Says� for orchestra, chorus, and two violin soloists at Carnegie Hall in 2007 and has premiered nine other orchestral pieces of his in New York City during recent seasons. San Francisco-based Hope Mohr Dance commissioned a large-scale score by Haas, premiering the work (�The Unsayable�) in March 2011. Recently, New York Magazine singled out Haas as one of the �New New York School� of composers.

In addition to his orchestral engagements, Haas is the founder and Artistic Director of Sympho, a trailblazing concert production company that creates powerful and emotional musical experiences, collaborating with leading artists and using unexpected performance methods and unorthodox venues. �Refits the Classical Experience for a New Century,� proclaimed The New York Times headline for Sympho�s first concert. �Something momentous has occurred,� raved the San Francisco Chronicle. And Symphony Magazine declared, �Something important was happening, something with emotional stakes.�

In February 2011, Sympho and Haas created a critically-acclaimed concert event for the opening night of the Park Avenue Armory�s Tune-In Music Festival, ranked by New York�s WQXR FM as the �Top New Music Event of 2011�. Upcoming events include a site-specific concert commission for Ann Hamilton�s Tower, an 80-foot sculpture and performance venue in Sonoma County, California, whose past performances have featured the likes of Kronos Quartet and Meredith Monk.

Paul Haas is a graduate of Yale University and The Juilliard School, where he studied conducting as a Bruno Walter Fellow with Otto-Werner Mueller. His other conducting teachers include Michael Tilson Thomas and Leonard Slatkin. He also studied opera conducting in Dresden, Germany, at the Hochschule f�r Musik. Haas currently resides in New York City with his wife and daughter. For more information, please visit his website.