Stephen Alltop
Stephen Alltop serves as Music Director of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. A specialist in oratorio and historical performance practice, he is a full-time member of the conducting and keyboard faculties at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. Dr. Alltop has conducted numerous opera productions at Northwestern, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Piccinni’s La Buona Figliuola, Handel’s Theodora and Alcina, and Orfeo and L’Incoronazione di Poppea by Monteverdi. Stephen Alltop has appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as both a harpsichord and organ soloist. He has performed with the Joffrey Ballet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and every season since 2011 as harpsichordist for Music of the Baroque. Alltop served as Coordinator for WFMT’s Bach Complete Organ Work Project in 2014, and the WFMT Bach Complete Keyboard Festival in 2015, and has performed as a keyboard artist across Europe.
Dr. Alltop has guest conducted orchestras and choruses in the United States, Europe and South Korea. He has led world premieres of works by John Luther Adams, Jan Bach, Frank Ferko, Stacy Garrop, Stephen Paulus, Joseph Schwantner, and many others. In June of 2022, he stepped in on four-hour’s notice to lead the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra in a program of Beethoven, Schubert and Tchaikovsky that was broadcast live on WFMT. He returned to the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra in August of 2023.
An advocate for diversity in programming, he has sought to bring attention to under-represented composers in both the orchestral and choral realm. Dr. Alltop lectures frequently about music for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Northwestern University Alumnae Continuing Education Series and Osher Lifelong Learning. Since 2014, he has given presentations on leadership for various programs in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern.
