Stephen Karr is a compelling interpreter of opera and orchestral works, appearing as a guest conductor in recent seasons with Anchorage Opera, Long Beach Opera and Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic. Notably, he was Associate Conductor for LBO's 2019 premiere of The Central Park Five, which won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Music. He is also a co-editor of the first modern performing edition of Joseph Bologne’s L’Amant Anonyme, which was premiered by LA Opera under James Conlon and has subsequently been produced at Wolf Trap Opera, Minnesota Opera, the Eastman School of Music and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

As an organist, he has held music director and/or organist positions at St. Clement’s-by-the-Sea, Newport Harbor Lutheran Church, St. Thomas the Apostle in Hollywood, St. Athanasius in Echo Park and St. Wilfrid’s in Huntington Beach, as well as interim directorships at the Church of Our Saviour in San Gabriel and St. Mark’s in Glendale. He currently serves as organist at Westwood Presbyterian Church.

In 2011, he co-founded Pacific Opera Project, for which he was music director until 2016, leading productions of The Turn of the Screw, Ariadne auf Naxos and The Rake’s Progress, among many others. The LA Times praised him as keeping the performers on “well-articulated rhythmic track.” He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organ from Mercer University (Robert Parris) and Westminster Choir College (Stefan Engels), as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting from UCLA (Neal Stulberg).