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“A potent, emotionally exhausting performance — Butorac revealed a far richer, more profound view of this inexhaustible score than we had thought possible. A wave of shouting, foot-stomping applause signaled the audience’s acknowledgment of what he and the orchestra had achieved.”
— The Spokesman-Review, October 2024
Darko Butorac is a conductor of rare interpretive authority. His presence on the podium has earned the sustained trust of leading orchestras across four continents and the most celebrated soloists of our time. In the 2026–27 season alongside soprano Tamara Radjenovic he makes his Carnegie Hall debut and takes the stage at the Wiener Konzerthaus in Vienna, the culmination of a career built over nearly two decades on musical intelligence, civic ambition, and a distinctive gift for drawing from any ensemble a quality of sound that lingers long after the final bar. Praised by the Westdeutsche Zeitung for his “exceptional combination of passion, elegance and well-timed pacing,” he has graced the podiums of more than thirty professional orchestras and opera companies.
His European guest conducting has taken him to the Belgrade Philharmonic, the Georgische Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, Deutsche Kammerorchester Neuss, Rubinstein Philharmonic of Łódź, and Orchestra Giuseppe Verdi Parma. He led the opening concert of the 2022 European Capital of Culture alongside clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer with Camerata Novi Sad, and has appeared at the Wiener Konzerthaus, Kolarac Hall in Belgrade, the Gran Teatro Nacional of Lima, and the Aspen, Tartu and St. Olav festivals.
A telling measure of Butorac’s impact is the consistency with which orchestras invite him back. When the Spokane Symphony called him on under twenty-four hours’ notice to step in for an ailing music director, he arrived, rehearsed, and delivered a Mendelssohn Scottish Symphony that critics placed “squarely in the great line of Austro-Germanic symphonic works of tragic scope,” earning a standing ovation and an immediate return engagement the following season. It is a pattern that has repeated itself across his career. The Belgrade Philharmonic reengaged him after his debut not once but twice, returning him for the season finale and the opening of the following season.
The roster of artists who have chosen to share the stage with Butorac is itself telling: soprano Renée Fleming, pianists Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson and Olga Kern, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, cellist Colin Carr, and clarinetist Anthony McGill, among them. His programming vision extends naturally across genres, with collaborations alongside mandolinist and MacArthur Fellow Chris Thile, banjoist Béla Fleck, and pianist Ben Folds, reflecting a musical sensibility that finds no useful distinction between tradition and vitality.
As Music Director of the Asheville Symphony since 2018, Butorac has overseen a period of sustained artistic and organisational growth that has fundamentally expanded the orchestra’s reach and presence in the life of the city. He co-created ALT ASO, an NEA-supported cross-genre chamber series that takes the symphony into unconventional venues and contexts across Asheville, dissolving the distance between the orchestra and the communities it serves. He helped revive Symphony in the Park, transforming it into the largest single annual event in Asheville, drawing audiences of ten thousand to a free outdoor concert in Pack Square. Under his leadership the organisation has grown in scale, ambition, and relevance, with the Masterworks series deepened, new initiatives added, and the orchestra’s identity sharpened into something genuinely distinctive. Throughout, Butorac has maintained an uncompromising commitment to new music, championing works and premieres by Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, Anna Clyne, Aleksandra Vrebalov, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Errollyn Wallen.
His eleven seasons at the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra produced some of the most morally serious concert programming in recent American orchestral life. Requiem of Resistance, created with the Holocaust Education Research Council, Temple Israel, and the Florida A&M Concert Choir, honoured the composers and performers who sustained their creative lives inside the Tereźín concentration camp. Ode to Understanding brought together the Florida A&M Concert Choir and the Morehouse College Glee Club for the Southern premiere of Joel Thompson’s Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, a project nationally recognised by the League of American Orchestras. The resonance of that collaboration led directly to the NEA commissioning Thompson’s Walk in Dignity, commemorating the 1956 Tallahassee Bus Boycott, a premiere Butorac led in 2023.
Prior to Tallahassee, Butorac served as Music Director of the Missoula Symphony from 2007 to 2019. Over twelve seasons he led the orchestra through remarkable growth, expanding both its audiences and its artistic horizons through bold repertoire choices and a commitment to bringing soloists of international stature to the region. Collaborations with violinists Karen Gomyo and Robert McDuffie and pianists Stewart Goodyear and Lisa Smirnova brought world-class artistry to Missoula’s concert life, while Butorac’s programming steadily deepened the orchestra’s relationship with its community.
Butorac’s influence extends well beyond the podium. The Spokesman-Review observed that his pre-concert exploration of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony was “an artistic event in itself, demonstrating not only his exhaustive mastery of the score, but his love of it and of the art to which he has devoted his life.” His TEDx talk on the language of conducting has drawn over 200,000 viewers, and he has been invited as keynote speaker at the Birla Carbon International Leadership Summit in Bangkok and serves as a thought-leader for Brighthouse, a division of Boston Consulting Group. He is a Grand Prix Laureate and Gold Medalist of the International Vakhtang Jordania Conducting Competition, Fellow of the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, and alumnus of the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview.
WITH OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR J.K. SIMMONS
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FEATURE IN SYMPHONY MAGAZINE
Renée Fleming on the Tallahassee Symphony; Tallahassee Democrat, Mark Hinson
“They were wonderful,” Fleming said of the TSO musicians. “It’s a beautiful sound in the hall. It’s a very warm hall. And I’m sure that’s also because of Darko, he’s a terrific musician. And he’s very young. I’d never met him before tonight. He’s a very nice person and extremely prepared. I appreciate it.”
TSO’s Season gets off to a ‘Heroic’ start; Tallahassee Democrat, Andy Lagrimas
“Butorac’s dynamic podium presence made a compelling case for this work to be heard more often, with sweeping arm gestures and kinetic baton work bringing a bit of drama to a symphony that can otherwise come across as relatively slight and anti-climactic.”
Guest Conductor succeeds with Prokofiev; AZ Daily Sun, Charles Spining
“Here, the conductor utilized his imposing presence, and his energetic yet graceful conducting style did not at all detract from the way he delineated each musical line and phrase, extracting the essence of the dramatic Beethoven work…”
An Unprecedented Evening with the CSO; CharlestonToday.Net, Lindsay Koob
“Guest conductor Butorac led a performance that made it sound like he had this music in his blood. He brought out everything from mournful Gypsy pathos to frantic “friskas,” realizing the exotic sound and spirit that has made the Hungarian idiom so popular. He drew smooth, burnished sounds from the strings, and kept brisk tempos.”