Biography

Euan Shields is a 24-year-old Japanese-American conductor aspiring to share the joy of music through his work. In March 2023, he was the winner of the Siemens Hallé International Conducting Competition. He will take on the role of Assistant Conductor for the Hallé Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder as well as Music Director of the Hallé Youth Orchestra in Fall 2023.

Among the orchestras Shields has conducted are the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Hallé Orchestra, the South Denmark Philharmoni, the Juilliard Lab Orchestra, and Juilliard’s AXIOM Ensemble. Recently he has worked as the assistant and cover conductor for John Adams, Xian Zhang, Roderick Cox, Giancarlo Guerrero, Jeffrey Milarsky, and Jonathon Heyward.

Shields is pursuing a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting at the Juilliard School under the guidance of David Robertson. He completed his Bachelor in Music at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music where he studied cello with Antonio Lysy and orchestral conducting with Neal Stulberg.

In June 2022, he was a finalist in the 5th Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition in Monaco and conducted the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo. Also, he was a semifinalist in the Llíria City of Music Conducting Competition in 2021.

Shields has attended conducting masterclasses worldwide, including the Allegra International Summer Academy and Nordic Masterclass for Conductors, studying with teachers such as Nicolás Pasquet, Johannes Schlaefli, and Jorma Panula.

Born in 1998 in Osaka, Japan, he learned the cello since early childhood. He moved to the U.S. when he was 13 and joined the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. Shields first became interested in becoming a conductor in his early teens, founding and conducting a chamber youth orchestra in San Francisco. He will graduate with a master’s degree from Juilliard in May 2023. Shields lives in New York City.