Grammy Award-winning Alan Gilbert has been Chief Conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra since fall 2019, after serving for more than a decade as Principal Guest Conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra Hamburg, as the German ensemble was formerly known, and Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera since spring 2021. He also holds positions as Principal Guest Conductor of Japan’s Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and Conductor Laureate of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. In 2017, he concluded an eight-year tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic. In addition to these appointments, Gilbert maintains a major international presence, making guest appearances with orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic. He has also conducted operatic productions for the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Zurich Opera, Milan’s La Scala, Dresden Semperoper and Santa Fe Opera, where he served as the inaugural Music Director, and led the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s U.S. stage premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin as part of the Lincoln Center–New York Philharmonic Opera Initiative. From 2011 to 2018, Alan Gilbert served as Director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at the Juilliard School, where he was also the first holder of Juilliard’s William Schuman Chair in Musical Studies. Alan Gilbert received Honorary Doctor of Music degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music (2010) and Westminster Choir College (2016), as well as Columbia University’s Ditson Conductor’s Award, which recognizes his “exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers and to contemporary music” (2011). Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2014, he has now also been named an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He gave the 2015 lecture for London’s Royal Philharmonic Society during the New York Philharmonic’s European tour, speaking on “Orchestras in the 21st Century – a new paradigm,” and received a 2015 Foreign Policy Association Medal for his commitment to cultural diplomacy.