Conductor Gary Thor Wedow has established an enviable reputation for dramatically exciting and historically informed performances with opera companies, orchestras, festivals and choral organizations throughout North America. Opera News has hailed him for his “hot music making” and “convincingly elegant period style.”

Maestro Wedow’s engagements during the COVID-19-shortened 2019–2020 season included returns to Opera Philadelphia for Semele and Seattle Opera for La Cenerentola. He made his house debut with Opera Omaha conducting The Abduction from the Seraglio and conducted Antonio Sartorio’s rarely performed Giulio Cesare in Egitto in May 2021 at the Carnegie Mellon School of Music (virtual). In the summer of 2021, he returned to Des Moines Metro Opera to conduct Platée and will conduct The Pirates of Penzance with Utah Opera in 2022.

The Maestro’s busy 2018–2019 season included a return engagement with Pittsburgh Opera for Don Pasquale, La Calisto at The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and Handel’s Giulio Cesare at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music.

Other conducting engagements over the past several years were La Cenerentola at San Diego Opera, Orphée for Des Moines Metro Opera, Lucia di Lammermoor for Utah Opera, The Magic Flute for Madison Opera, L’incoronazione di Poppea at Cincinnati Opera, and a special collaboration between The Juilliard School and the Westminster Choir College of Mozart’s Requiem at Alice Tully Hall. Handel’s Messiah is frequently on his schedule with return engagements at Portland Baroque, his debut with the New York Philharmonic, and a special performance at New York’s St. Thomas Church, which The New York Times called “a war horse of a different, brighter color, with mighty crescendos and exquisite pianissimos, and guilty pleasures.” Wedow conducted for many years at New York City Opera and was Associate Conductor for Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society.

A resident of New York City, he has been a member of the Juilliard School faculty since 1994. He has led performances of L’incoronazione di Poppea, La finta giardiniera, Ariodante and Don Giovanni at the school. Of particular note was the tour of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with the Juilliard 415 Historical Performance Ensemble, culminating at Alice Tully Hall “in a performance that caught fire and magic,” according to The New York Times.

A musical scholar, Wedow has prepared several performing editions of baroque works in collaboration with gambist Lawrence Lipnik. He studied piano with virtuoso Jorge Bolet at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and received his Master of Music degree at the New England Conservatory.