Sat, Mar 21 at 8:00 PM
New World Center
Saturday, March 21 at 8:00 PM
- Joshua Gersen, conductor
This concert is part of the Saturday Evening One series. Come be inspired at the New World Center! With either of these series, you’ll enjoy blockbuster artists like MTT and Nicola Benedetti and orchestral master works like Dvorak’s own “New World Symphony.” Subscriptions to the Saturday Evening One series (4 concerts) begin at $132. Click to explore the full subscriptions!
Joshua Gersen recently concluded his tenure as the Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic, where he most notably made his subscription debut in 2017 on hours’ notice to critical acclaim filling in for an ailing Semyon Bychkov. Mr. Gersen was also previously the Music Director of the New York Youth Symphony, as well as the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Conducting Fellow of the New World Symphony, where he served as the assistant conductor to Artistic Director Michael Tilson Thomas, and led the orchestra in various subscription, education and family concerts, including the orchestra’s renowned Pulse series. He made his conducting debut with the San Francisco Symphony in the fall of 2013 and has been invited back numerous times to conduct a variety of concerts, including a performance in SoundBox and even filled in for Michael Tilson Thomas on part of a subscription series. Mr. Gersen was the winner of the Aspen Music Festival’s prestigious 2011 Aspen Conducting Prize and the 2010 Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize, and served as the festival’s assistant conductor for the 2012 summer season under Robert Spano. He served as the principal conductor of the renowned Ojai Music Festival in 2013 and has recently appeared as a guest conductor with the symphonies of Chicago, Detroit, National in Washington, D.C., Toronto, New Jersey, Indianapolis, San Antonio and North Carolina. He was also a recipient of a 2015 and 2016 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award.
Beyond his conducting interests, Mr. Gersen is also an avid composer. Both his String Quartet No. 1 and Fantasy for Chamber Orchestra have been premiered in the New England Conservatory’s celebrated Jordan Hall. He has had works performed by the New Mexico Symphony, Greater Bridgeport Symphony and frequently by the Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra. His work as a composer has also led to an interest in conducting contemporary music. He has conducted several world premieres of new works by young composers with the New York Youth Symphony as part of their esteemed First Music Program, and with the New York Philharmonic as part of their Very Young Composers program. He has also collaborated with many prominent contemporary composers including John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christopher Rouse, Steven Mackey, Mason Bates and Michael Gandolfi.
Mr. Gersen made his conducting debut at age 11 with the Greater Bridgeport Youth Orchestra and his professional conducting debut five years later, when he led the Greater Bridgeport Symphony in a performance of his own composition, A Symphonic Movement. Mr. Gersen is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied conducting with the esteemed Otto Werner Mueller, and the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition with Michael Gandolfi.