Paul Phillips is the Gretchen B. Kimball Director of Orchestral Studies and Professor of Music at Stanford University, and author A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess, the definitive study of Burgess’s music and its relationship to his writing. Acknowledged as the leading expert on Burgess and his music, Phillips has contributed essays to six books on Burgess, including the Norton Critical Edition of A Clockwork Orange, and is an Honorary Patron of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and its Music Advisor. Phillips is also a noted expert on the music of Igor Stravinsky. His article “The Enigma of Variations: A Study of Stravinsky’s Final Work for Orchestra” is cited by Richard Taruskin in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions as “the best exposition in print of Stravinsky’s serial methods” and his chamber version of Stravinsky’s opera Mavra, published by Boosey & Hawkes, has been performed at Glyndebourne and other opera houses internationally.

At Stanford, Phillips conducts the Stanford Symphony Orchestra and Stanford Philharmonia, and teaches conducting, musicology, and interdisciplinary courses. Previously he was Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music at Brown University and Music Director of the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and held conducting posts with the Frankfurt Opera, Stadttheater Lüneburg, Greensboro Symphony, Greensboro Opera, Maryland Symphony, Savannah Symphony, and Rhode Island Philharmonic. He has conducted over 75 orchestras, ballet troupes, choirs, and opera companies worldwide, including the San Francisco Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Salta, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Choir, Masterworks Chorale, Opera Providence, and Opera Boston. His five Naxos recordings include Anthony Burgess: Orchestral Music and Manhattan Intermezzo with the Brown University Orchestra; Music for Great Films of the Silent Era (Parts 1 and 2) with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), and Toujours Provence with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Phillips studied at the Eastman School of Music, Columbia University, and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and at the Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood, where his teachers included Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Seiji Ozawa, and Michael Tilson Thomas. With a conducting repertoire of over 1000 works spanning much of the classical and pops repertoire, Phillips has performed with Itzhak Perlman, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck and many other classical, jazz, and pop stars. He is also an award-winning composer and gifted pianist who has performed at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Orvieto Musica, Carnegie Recital Hall, and Lincoln Center. His honors include eleven ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, 1st Prize in the NOS International Conductors Course (Holland) and Wiener Meisterkurse Conductors Course (Vienna), and selection for the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program.