Ken Selden is Director of Orchestral Studies at Portland State University, a position he has held since 2006. Under his leadership, the PSU Orchestra has received multiple ASCAP Awards in Adventurous Programming from the League of American Orchestras. In addition to annual ballet and opera productions, the orchestra has hosted guest artists Manuel Barrueco, China Forbes, Jennifer Frautschi, Matt Haimovitz, Anna Polonsky, Awadagin Pratt, and Orli Shaham.

In the Portland area, Selden has appeared as guest conductor of the Eugene, Newport, Oregon, Portland Festival, and Vancouver Symphonies, as well as the Portland Chamber Orchestra, Salem Chamber Orchestra, Third Angle, Fear No Music, Oregon Origins Project, Portland Youth Philharmonic, and Vancouver Symphony Youth Virtuosi. With the Martingale Ensemble, he has recorded two Mahler albums for MSR Classics, and a new Piazzolla album featuring violinist Tomás Cotik, for the Naxos label.

Prior to his appointment at PSU, he served as Assistant Conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Eos Orchestra, and worked with young musicians at New Jersey Youth Symphony, Juilliard Pre-College, Brooklyn College, and Columbia University.

Selden is a graduate of New England Conservatory, Indiana University, and Peabody Conservatory. His teachers include violinists James Buswell and Yuval Yaron, chamber music coaches Joseph Gingold and Janos Starker, and conductors Gustav Meier and Markand Thakar. He attended the National Conducting Institute at the Kennedy Center, where he studied with Leonard Slatkin, and the National Arts Center in Canada, where he studied with Pinchas Zuckerman and Jorma Panula. He has conducted orchestras in Baltimore, Denver, Minnesota, North Carolina, and San Francisco, and in Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Italy, and Romania. He has worked with composers Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Tan Dun, Bryan Johnason, Peter Lieberson, Michael Nyman, and Stephen Paulus.