Widely recognized for his disciplined and insightful performances of contemporary music, conductor Steven Loy has earned a reputation as a committed advocate for modern composers. As the permanent conductor of the Slovenian ensemble MD7 since 2005, he has premiered more than 30 new works composed especially for the ensemble. He has also worked frequently with the Slowind and Slavko Osterc ensembles and has led the Slovenian premieres of numerous significant 20th century works, including the first half of Gérard Grisey’s seminal Les espaces acoustiques and Helmut Lachenmann's Mouvement - vor der Erstarrung, as well as works by Luigi Nono, Tristan Murail, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvator Sciarrino, Marc-André Dalbavie, Georg Friedrich Haas, Steve Reich, Brian Ferneyhough and others. Equally active in the recording studio, he has recorded three compact discs with MD7 and a portrait CD of music by Slovenian composer Božidar Kos with the Osterc Ensemble. In 2010 he became the curator and principal conductor of the contemporary music series “Predihano,” organized by Cankarjev dom, the central performing arts centre in Slovenia. In the realm of symphonic music he has conducted concerts with the Slovenian Philharmonic, the Savaria Symphony in Hungary and the Braşov Philharmonic in Romania, and has led youth orchestras in the United States and in Poland.

Originally from Virginia in the United States, he studied as a composer in Philadelphia before heading to Europe to study conducting at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest and later at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, where he obtained the Diplôme superieur. He has actively participated in master classes with Péter Eötvös, Helmuth Rilling, Jorma Panula, Jean-Marc Burfin, Zoltán Peskó and Yuri Simonov. In 2002 he earned the Diploma di Merito at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, where he studied with Lothar Zagrosek.