Jerry and Linda Butler

Alan Gilbert has been named Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, effective in the 2009-10 season. The New York-born conductor has been chief conductor and artistic advisor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra since 2000, and principal guest conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra since 2004.

Mr. Gilbert, who appears regularly with many of the world’s leading orchestras and opera companies, will begin the 2007-08 season with his Vienna State Opera debut, conducting Bizet’s Carmen, and soon afterward will inaugurate his final Stockholm season. He was the first music director in the history of the Santa Fe Opera, and during the company’s 50th-anniversary season in 2006, he led the first U.S. production of Thomas Adès’s Tempest after its 2004 world premiere at Covent Garden, and performances of Bizet’s Carmen, with Anne Sofie von Otter in her first U.S. appearances in the opera.

In March 2008 Mr. Gilbert will spend two weeks with the New York Philharmonic, leading concerts that include Hear & Now, Inside the Music, and the World Premiere of Marc Neikrug’s Quintessence: Symphony No. 2, a New York Philharmonic Commission. It will be the second year of a three-year arrangement during which Mr. Gilbert will be spending multiple weeks with the Orchestra. He made his debut with the Philharmonic in October 2001 as the Diamond American Conductor, and has conducted the Orchestra numerous times, including the Philharmonic Festival: Charles Ives - An American Original in Context in May 2004, and most recently, in March 2007, when he led works by Bach, Ligeti, and Schumann.

In the coming season he will also lead The Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, and will take the orchestra of his alma mater - Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music - to Carnegie Hall. He will lead concerts with the San Francisco Symphony, and in Zurich will conduct the Tonhalle Orchestra and return to the Zurich Opera House. In Paris he leads concerts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; with Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra he conducts the final concerts of the 2007 Schleswig-Holstein Festival, as well as several series of subscription performances in Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen. He also takes the NDRSO on tour to Cologne, Vienna, Prague, and Ljubljana, Slovenia. Early in the season he returns to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and will end his tenure there with a valedictory performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.

Last season Mr. Gilbert led a Stockholm festival focusing on the music of Hans Werner Henze, after honoring John Adams and Dutilleux in earlier seasons there. He conducted both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Opera, making his debut at the latter with a new production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. After performances with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, he conducted two subscription weeks with the New York Philharmonic, and made return engagements with the San Francisco Symphony and with The Cleveland Orchestra (where he was assistant conductor from 1995 to 1997). He returned to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a nine-concert residency in May 2007, and led the NDR Symphony Orchestra in tours of Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. During the season Mr. Gilbert conducted works by composers ranging from J.S. Bach to Thomas Adès, from Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Dvorák and Strauss to Prokofiev, Copland, Ligeti, McPhee, and Daniel Börtz.

In October 2005 Mr. Gilbert conducted the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, the first time the orchestra had performed there in more than two decades. While in New York he also led the orchestra in a special commemorative concert at the United Nations.

Alan Gilbert regularly conducts many other top orchestras in America and Europe. He has appeared in recent seasons with the Atlanta, Baltimore, National Symphony, and Boston Symphony orchestras; Minnesota Orchestra; and Toronto Symphony, as well as Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon, and Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He made his debut with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in January 2006, and gave an unscheduled debut with the Berlin Philharmonic a few weeks later, substituting for an ailing Bernard Haitink. Both Berlin appearances garnered rave reviews.

Mr. Gilbert has conducted frequently in Japan, where he took Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra on a critically acclaimed tour, and where he enjoys a strong relationship with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. He has also worked with the Tokyo Symphony, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, and New Japan Philharmonic. In China he has conducted the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in a nationally televised concert from Beijing.

Alan Gilbert’s parents, Yoko Takebe and Michael Gilbert, both violinists in the New York Philharmonic (Mr. Gilbert is now retired), were his first teachers. Born and raised in New York City, he studied at Harvard, The Curtis Institute, and The Juilliard School, and was a substitute violinist with The Philadelphia Orchestra for two seasons. He also played second fiddle to his father in 1993 in the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, where the elder Gilbert was concertmaster for many seasons.

Mr. Gilbert was the recipient of the 1997 Seaver / National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, and was named a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, one of the country’s oldest musical institutions. As in the past, he continues to perform chamber music as often as his schedule allows, with cellist Lynn Harrell, pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Cho-Liang Lin, and violinist/violist Pinchas Zukerman among his frequent partners.

• New York Philharmonic Biography