The conductor for the 21st Century: "Entrepreneurial, creative, and plugged in”, “Innately talented musician and conductor, without frills or ego” - the accolades all indicate the exuberance of artists that have worked with Bahman Saless, the founder of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra. “His enthusiasm is contagious and the results he gets from his players are quite extraordinary”.

Bahman Saless’ musical career can be summarized in one word: Miraculous! After pursuing a variety of seemingly unrelated careers, Mr. Saless, who studied the violin as a teenager and was a member of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, founded the Boulder Chamber Orchestra.

Bahman Saless studied the violin as a teen in England, even though music composition was his passion. He studied the violin with Lyman Bodman at Michigan State University while pursuing a career in theoretical Physics. He later founded the Principia String Quartet in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado. After completing his graduate studies in Physics, Dr. Saless moved to California working as a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory while pursuing a second parallel career as a composer, winning awards in music composition and becoming a successful film composer.

As a composer, Bahman Saless has scored more than a dozen nature documentaries as well as many Hollywood trailers and teasers. Saless’ conducting career took off when he started his studies with some of the great conducting teachers including Kirk Trevor, Donald Schleicher, William LaRou Jones and Tomas Netopil. For the last 17 years, Mr. Saless has been the music director of Boulder Chamber Orchestra but has conducted the Martinu Philharmonic, Astoria Symphony, Zlin Symphony and the Round Rock Symphony Orchestra. His recent guest appearances include conducting La Traviata with the Italian Dominico Scarlatti Orchestra, the Brazilia National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese and the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra in Italy. He will be guest conducting the Orchestra of the famous Teatro Goldoni in Livorno Italy in November of 2023.

Mr. Saless is also a co-founder of the International Conducting Institute (ICI), which provides frequent workshops for young conductors from all over the world to learn the best practices of conductors and music directors. ICI is dedicated to the advancement of the art of orchestral conducting.

Saless has proven himself to be not only a talented and passionate conductor and composer, but also an organization builder; an artist with creative vision as well as a leader with business savvy and an entrepreneurial mind that can take orchestras to the next level, wherever that might be.