James Gaffigan to be Permanent Guest Conductor
Friday 10 September 2010
As of the 2011-2012 season
The young American conductor James Gaffigan has signed on as the permanent guest conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra for a period of four years. Gaffigan will take up his duties in August 2011, conducting four productions each season.
James Gaffigan made his debut with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra last April. In the ZaterdagMatinee series he conducted works by Liszt and Ravel, the world premiere of Richard Rijnvos’s Union Square Dance and the Dutch premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto. These complex scores were brought to life by Gaffigan with ‘great precision and warmth’ (De Telegraaf, 14 April ’09). In next season’s ZaterdagMatinee series he will conduct Liszt’s Faust Symphony and the Dutch premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Messages, performed by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Choir and vocal soloists.
James Gaffigan spent three years as associate conductor with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and before that with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra. He captured international attention when he won first prize in the Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in 2004.
He has held guest conductorships with symphony orchestras in Munich and Berlin, with the Tonhalle Orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In the current season (2009-2010), performances are planned with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the symphony orchestra of Lucerne, Camerata Salzburg and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne. In 2011 he will also become principal conductor of the Lucerne orchestra. Read als o this interview.
In his home country, he has conducted the symphony orchestras of Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Houston, Baltimore, New Jersey, Colorado and Oregon. This season will see his debut with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
Gaffigan made his opera debut in 2005 conducting the Zurich Opera in Puccini’s La Boheme. He then took part in the Aspen Music Festival with Mozart’s Don Giovanni and with Glyndebourne on Tour, conducting Verdi’s Falstaff.
‘He is a conductor of real promise, combining muscular energy with unabashed lyricism!’
New York Observer
