JEFF VON DER SCHMIDT, conductor, is Founding Artistic Director of Southwest Chamber Music.  He has led numerous performances of standard 20th century composers as well as world and local premiere of new work.  Mr von der Schmidt has received six GRAMMY nominations, including consecutive 2003 and 2004 GRAMMY Awards as conductor for the Complete Chamber Music of Carlos Chávez Volumes 1 and 2.  He was nominated for Best Classical Album in 2005 for the Complete Chamber Music of Carlos Chávez, Volume 3 by both mainstream and Latin Grammies. 

Recent projects include leading cultural exchanges at the Hanoi National Conservatory in Vietnam and the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia featuring Aura, a major new composition by Grawemeyer Award winning composer Chinary Ung; and a complete cycle of the chamber music of Carlos Chávez with Southwest Chamber Music and the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble at the UNAM Center in Mexico City in May 2007.

His successful 2003 debut at the Library of Congress, with soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson in Richard Felciano’s An American Decameron, was greeted with a standing ovation.  He has led cycles of the Los Angeles works of Arnold Schoenberg at Cooper Union in New York City and at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, where Southwest Chamber Music was the first American ensemble to perform at the Center since its relocation from the University of Southern California.  Mr. von der Schmidt received the Henri M. Kohn Award as the outstanding student at the Tanglewood Music Festival in 1980 from Gunther Schuller and Seiji Ozawa, and studied horn with Roland Berger of the Vienna Philharmonic, holding a Certificate in German from the University of Vienna.  He has lectured on music at the Getty Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Arizona State University, University of Colorado, Ohio State University, Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the Hanoi National Conservatory in Vietnam, and the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck, Germany.