New York Philharmonic Music Director Alan Gilbert began his tenure in September 2009, launching what New York magazine called “a fresh future for the Philharmonic.” The first native New Yorker to hold the post, he has sought to make the Orchestra a point of civic pride for the city and country.
Mr. Gilbert combines works in fresh and innovative ways; has forged important artistic partnerships, introducing the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence and The Mary and James G. Wallach Artist-in-Residence; and introduced an annual multi-week festival and CONTACT!, the new-music series. In the 2012–13 season he conducts world premieres; presides over a cycle of Brahms’s symphonies and concertos; conducts Bach’s Mass in B minor and an all-American program, including Ives’s Fourth Symphony; leads the Orchestra’s EUROPE / SPRING 2013 tour; and continues The Nielsen Project, the multi-year initiative to perform and record the Danish composer’s symphonies and concertos, the first release of which was named by The New York Times as among the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012. The season concludes with Gilbert’s Playlist, four programs showcasing the Music Director’s themes and ideas, culminating in a theatrical reimagining of Stravinsky ballets with director/designer Doug Fitch and New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns. Last season’s highlights included performances of three Mahler symphonies, including the Second, Resurrection, on A Concert for New York; tours to Europe (including the Orchestra’s first International Associates residency at London’s Barbican Centre) and California; and Philharmonic 360, the Philharmonic and Park Avenue Armory’s acclaimed spatial-music program featuring Stockhausen’s Gruppen, building previous seasons’ successful productions of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, each acclaimed in 2010 and 2011, respectively, as New York magazine’s number one classical music event of the year.
In September 2011 Alan Gilbert became Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at The Juilliard School, where he is the first to hold the William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. Conductor Laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra, he regularly conducts leading ensembles such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Berlin Philharmonic.
Alan Gilbert’s acclaimed 2008 Metropolitan Opera debut, leading John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, received a 2011 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. Renée Fleming’s recent Decca recording Poèmes, on which he conducted, received a 2013 Grammy Award. Mr. Gilbert studied at Harvard University, The Curtis Institute of Music, and Juilliard and was assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra (1995–97). In May 2010 he received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Curtis, and in December 2011 he received Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award for his commitment to performing American and contemporary music.
