Nathan Blair is quickly establishing himself as a promising conductor. He is the first-place winner of the 2025 American Prize in Opera Conducting and a recipient of a 2024 Career Assistance Award from the renowned Solti Foundation U.S. He will compete in the prestigious 2025 International Ferenc Fricsay Conducting Competition. 

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As a guest conductor, he has conducted Die Zauberflöte with the Berner Symphonieorchester, L’elisir d’amore with the Bremer Philharmoniker, and Die Fledermaus with the Philharmonisches Orchester Kiel. From 2019 to 2021, he assisted Marko Letonja at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg for productions of Parsifal and Hänsel und Gretel. He was also invited to prepare the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg for a concert tour.

 

From 2023 to 2025 he was Second Kapellmeister at the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar. There, he has conducted performances of Hänsel und Gretel, La Cenerentola, and La Traviata, as well as other concerts with the Staatskapelle Weimar. He also served as music director for the revival (Wiederaufnahme) of My Fair Lady and the new productions of Brundibár and Räuber Hotzenplotz.

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From 2018 to 2023, he was Kapellmeister and Répétiteur at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken, where he conducted performances of Carmen, Die Fledermaus, La Traviata, The Nutcracker, Im weißen Rößl, West Side Story, Die Csárdásfürstin, and My Fair Lady. He also served as music director for Evita, Die arabische Prinzessin, Medea Senecae, Onomatopoesie, and numerous family concerts. Additionally, he was musical director of Die stumme Serenade, a co-production between the Hochschule für Musik Saar and the Saarländisches Staatstheater.

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Nathan has additionally established himself as a collaborative pianist and vocal coach. From 2022 to 2023, he held a teaching position in accompaniment and song interpretation at the Hochschule für Musik Saar. As a composer, he has composed several song cycles and is a three-time winner of the National Young Composers Challenge with the Orlando Philharmonic (2007, 2008, and 2010).

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He earned his master’s degree in conducting from the prestigious Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, where he was appointed Graduate Assistant Pianist and Opera Coach at the Indiana University Opera and Ballet Theatre. In addition to conducting numerous orchestral concerts, he was entrusted with preparing St. Luke Passion with the IU Philharmonic for Maestro Krzysztof Penderecki, who conducted the performance during the conferral of his honorary doctorate in 2017. That same year, he was also nominated to prepare Tod und Verklärung with the IU Concert Orchestra for the Cleveland Orchestra Residency.

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His principal conducting teachers include Maestri Arthur Fagen, David Effron, David Neely, and Murry Sidlin. As a collaborative pianist, he studied with Ivo Kaltchev, Caren Levine, and Kevin Murphy.