James Conlon is Music Director of LA Opera, the Ravinia Festival, and the Cincinnati May Festival. One of today's preeminent conductors, he has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire, and developed enduring relationships with many of the world's most prestigious symphony orchestras and opera houses. He has appeared as guest conductor with virtually every major North American and European orchestra and has been a frequent guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera for over thirty years. Conlon has devoted himself to extensive programming of works of composers whose compositions were suppressed by the Nazi regime and for his efforts received the Anti-Defamation League's Crystal Globe Award. He is the winner of two Grammy awards for conducting LA Opera's production of Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny on DVD and received France's highest distinction - the Légion d'Honneur - from then-President of the French Republic, Jacques Chirac in 2002.