“When Stephanie Childress took to the podium to rehearse the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra on Nov. 13, she was only recently back from Paris, where she debuted as conductor with the Orchestre de Paris, afterward tacking on a quick side trip to London to see her family,” writes Daniel Durchholz in Sunday’s (11/21) St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri). “The day before she left St. Louis, she ran a half-marathon in Forest Park…. Childress, who is 22, was hired by the SLSO in March 2020…. ‘A lot of my colleagues were very hard hit, especially young conductors who are trying to start their careers,’ she says. ‘I felt very privileged and very grateful to have this position.’ … Childress’ own path to her current position includes being a [violinist] in the National Youth Orchestra in the U.K. for three years…. In September 2020, she took second prize at La Maestra, an all-female conducting competition in Paris…. As a young person, and a woman of both talent and accomplishment, Childress is part of a rising tide in classical music, and indeed many other realms, in which an old-boys network is slowly … opening up opportunities for those who deserve them.”
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