Bio

Stephen Mulligan is one of the rare American conductors whose composition practice is an integral part of his artistry.

During the 2026/27 season, he returns to the Royal Danish Opera Academy to conduct Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up and debuts with Ensemble Paramirabo, Chants Libres, and the North Carolina Symphony. Also this season, percussionist David Moliner will premiere his Rotor at the Elbphilharmonie, the FES Ensemble will record his Off Course in Rotterdam, and the Berlin Academy of American Music will reprise his prize-winning septet Passacaglia.

Mulligan has appeared as a guest conductor with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Filarmonica Transilvania, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Athelas Ensemble, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Cincinnati Opera, and University of North Texas Opera, among others.

Mulligan is the winner of the Aspen Conducting Prize, the Dina Koston Composition Prize, and a three-time recipient of the Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award. He has earned a reputation for delivering under pressure: as the Associate Conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, he jumped in to conduct three classical subscription concerts within six weeks (“‘Superman’ Stephen Mulligan again steps in,” Arts ATL); as a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he jumped in for Gustavo Dudamel on an all-Beethoven program (“full of color and shot through with light," bachtrack).

Mulligan’s compositions are published by Universal Edition (Vienna) since 2026. His solo-work for singing contrabassist Haiku inspired the founding of the Begüm Aslan Composition Contest, resulting in the creation of dozens of new works. As an arranger, his orchestration of Ravel’s Toccata debuted in Little Rock to a glowing review (“brilliantly orchestrated,” Arkansas Democrat Gazette) and his arrangement of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer for The Yale Whiffenpoofs has been performed around the world. Last season, Mulligan was an artist-in-residence at Willapa Bay AiR in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Inspired by conductor-composers before him, he is a passionate advocate for living composers, exploring how musical traditions and frontiers enrich each other. He led the US premiere of Tyshawn Sorey’s Pulitzer Prize winning Saxophone Concerto and many other notable premieres, and he has enthusiastically commissioned new works since his undergraduate days as Music Director of the Berkeley College Orchestra at Yale University.

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Mulligan began his music studies with his father Gregory, a former violinist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He studied conducting with Gustav Meier and Marin Alsop at the Peabody Institute and with Robert Spano at the Aspen Music Festival, and he studied composition with Jörg Widmann at the Barenboim-Said Akademie (Berlin).