Sarah Hicks

Sarah Hicks (born Tokyo, Japan, raised in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American orchestral conductor. She is Principal Conductor of Pops and Presentations for the Minnesota Orchestra, and Staff Conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Hicks was trained as a violist and pianist, and received a BA magna cum laude in music from Harvard University and an Artist’s Degree in conducting from Curtis Institute of Music. She won the Thomas Hoopes Prize for undergraduate theses and the Doris Cohen Levy Prize for conducting at Harvard, and the Helen F. Whitaker Fund Scholarship and a Presser Award at Curtis.

She previously served as Associate Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, Associate Conductor of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Resident Conductor of the Florida Philharmonic, Assistant Conductor of the Reading Symphony and Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Singers, the chorus of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She was for five seasons Music Director of the Hawaii Summer Symphony, an ensemble she founded in 1991. After graduating from Curtis, she was for one season assistant conductor to the Verbier Festival Orchestra, training with James Levine.

As a guest conductor, Hicks has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, Florida Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Des Moines Symphony, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Prime Philharmonic (Seoul, Korea), East Slovak State Opera Theatre, New National Theatre Tokyo, and the Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice.

She has collaborated with Jaime Laredo, Hilary Hahn, Ben Folds, Smokey Robinson, and Sting, for whom she served as conductor on the final leg of his Symphonicities Tour. In June 2012 she conducted the opening concert of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in a program featuring Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Sumi Jo and Jackie Evancho.