Ben Whiteley

BEN WHITELEY (Music Director/Conductor) conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a gala tribute to Stephen Sondheim, following an earlier SLSO program of operetta and musical theater. After conducting over 100 performances of The Addams Family on Broadway, he led the national tour and has since supervised productions of that show in Buenos Aires, Sydney and Mexico City. Other New York credits include the original Broadway production of Cats, where he returned to conduct its final performances. For Carnegie Hall, he conducted tributes to Alan Jay Lerner and Comden and Green, as well as Noel Coward's Sail Away starring Elaine Stritch. He has conducted A Christmas Story at Madison Square Garden and 1776 for City Center Encores!. Other music director credits include the national tours of Hello, Dolly!, Spamalot, The Full Monty, Falsettos, Big and Grand Hotel, as well as Ragtime at Seattle's 5th Avenue Theatre and Damn Yankees at the Paper Mill Playhouse.

Ben also has extensive experience in choral conducting, preparing the Encores! ensemble for over 30 of their shows and numerous recordings, most recently 2024's Titanic. He prepared and conducted the choral ensemble on the complete recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro (Sony Classics) and was choral director for the New York Philharmonic's concert productions of Carousel (PBS) and My Fair Lady. He has led performances by the Three Irish Tenors and conducted on the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack of HBO's Boardwalk Empire.

Ben is a graduate of the University of Michigan SMTD, where he has lectured and conducted for the Musical Theatre Department, including productions of Grand Hotel, Music Man, Side Show, Candide, Sweeney Todd, and Carousel. This summer Ben returned to the St. Louis Muny, where he has conducted for over 20 years, for their production of Shrek.