Barbara Day Turner

Maestra Barbara Day Turner is the founder and Music Director of the San José Chamber Orchestra. An ardent advocate for new music, she has premiered more than 130 works just with SJCO. Named the 2012 Silicon Valley Arts Council “On Stage” Artist Laureate, Maestra Day Turner is also Music Administrator and Conductor of the Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theater, where she has led critically acclaimed productions of Samuel Barber’s Vanessa, Puccini’s La bohème, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Verdi’s Otello, Rossini’s Barber of Seville, Showboat and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

She has conducted opera in Berlin, and the Thuringian Symphony Orchestra in Germany as well as the Orquesta Sinfónica de Aguascalientes, Mexico. Maestra Day Turner’s discography includes five recordings with SJCO, the PBS award-winning DVD of George Roumanis’ opera Phaedra, the Naxos release of Alva Henderson’s opera Nosferatu (world premiere), and in 2014 released recorded works by Howard Hersh entitled Angels and Watermarks. In her many years with Opera San José she led the premieres of Henry Mollicone’s Hotel Eden, Alva Henderson’s West of Washington Square, Craig Bohmler and Daniel Helfgot’s The Tale of the Nutcracker and George Roumanis’ Phaedra in addition to the standard repertoire.

She has conducted a staged workshop performance of Paul Davies’ Carlota, Portland Opera’s Nixon In China, and concerts with the Silicon Valley, Redwood, South Valley and Billings symphonies, and the North Fayetteville orchestra. Barbara Day Turner is a frequent adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions and annual judge for the Irving M. Klein International String Competition, in addition to serving on the advisory boards of Opera NEO and the Delphi Trio, and on the board of directors of the National Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy group.