Quickly earning a reputation as New York’s premier “Indie Opera” conductor, Peter Szep is known for his “tremendously affecting” accounts of difficult works. His production of “Il Tabarro” performed on an oil tanker at the Red Hook container port received critical acclaim in The New York Times and was called “exhilarating” by Brian Kellow in Opera News. Peter Szep is Music Director of Vertical Player Repertory (www.vpropera.org) in New York, where he will be conducting a site specific production of "A View from a Bridge" performed in the Red Hook neighborhood in which the opera is set. Recent engagements also included a concert with The Windham Orchestra in Brattleboro Vermont, Darius Milhaud's “Médée” with the Vertical Player Repertory in New York City, and AMC Mountains and Music.

Though trained as an orchestra conductor and passionate about the classical repertoire, Mr. Szep has dedicated much of his career to championing new opera works, recently conducting the world premier of Anna Dembska’s “The Singing Bridge” at the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle Maine. He also conducted the premier of “The Bee Opera” by Sorrel Hayes, the premier of David Rodwin’s opera, “The Sound of Waves: A Prayer Cycle,” which was produced as part of the Mabou Mines’ Suite program. Mr. Szep was also on the production staff on the American premier of Janacek’s Osud, conducted by Leon Botstein, and worked as a video artist in the multimedia production of Don Juan in Prague at the Fischer Center for the Performing Arts featuring one of the most remarkable personalities in Czech music, Iva Bittova.

Mr. Szep organized a Tsunami Relief Fundraiser for Oxfam America in Keene, combining the orchestral and choral forces of The Raylynmor Opera, The Keene Choral and the Monadnock Chorus in a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He was also the Artistic Director of the Chroma Symphony, an experimental multimedia orchestra in New York, working in collaboration with video artists Tom Wingfield, Nat Finkelstein and Christine Doempke. His collaborative video work has also been shown as part of Urban Lightworks 2003 in Richmond Virginia. In 2002, Peter Szep completed his MFA in Conducting at Bard College, where he studied with the eminent composer, teacher and conductor Harold Farberman.