Zubin Mehta

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Zubin Mehta (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western and Eastern classical music.

He was the music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and was conductor Emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mehta's father was the conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and Mehta received his early musical education from him.

He enrolled in the Vienna state music academy at the age of 18, where he earned his diploma as a conductor after three years.

At the age of 21, he began winning international competitions and conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

Mehta gained experience by substituting for celebrated maestros around the world beginning in the 1960s. Mehta served as the music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967, as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra from 1962 to 1978, the youngest music director for any major North American orchestra.

He was appointed Music Advisor to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969 and 1981, he became its Music Director for Life.

Mehta performed with the New York Philharmonic from 1978 to 1991.

He has been the chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, since 1985. He is a member of both Florence and Tel Aviv, and he was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997 and 2006 respectively.

Several orchestras around the world bestowed Honorary Conductor on him.

Mehta has been on several tours with the Bavarian State Opera more recently, and he has a packed schedule of guest appearances.

He received the Kennedy Center Honor in December 2006, and the Praemium Imperiale in October 2008 was honoured by the Japanese Imperial Family in Nago. Mehta was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, in 2016.

Early years and education

During the British Raj, Mehta was born in Bombay (now Mumbai, India), the older brother of Mehli (1908–2002) and Tehmina (Daruvala) Mehta. Gujarati is his native language. His father, a self-taught violinist, conceived and conducted the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and later the American Youth Symphony, which he conducted for 33 years after relocating to Los Angeles. His father had previously lived in New York to study with violinist Ivan Galamian, a well-known educator who also taught Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. His father returned from Bombay as a brilliant violinist of the Russian academy. "You don't know how much I love your father," Mehta has said on several occasions when he works in the United States. "The people who played with her mother were the victims of a riot in the United States."

Mehta has described his childhood as being surrounded by music at home all the time, and has reported that he learned to speak Gujarati and sing around the same time. After his father returned from the United States after the Second World War, he believes his father had a significant influence on him, and he listened to his quartet every day. Mehta's father was the first one to play violin and piano. His father allowed him to conduct sectional rehearsals of the Bombay Symphony at his early teens, and at sixteen, he was playing the full orchestra during rehearsals.

Mehta graduated from St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and went on to study medicine at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, at the behest of his mother, who wanted him to pursue a more "respectable" career rather than performing, which was more focused on music. He dropped out after two years to Vienna, one of Europe's music centers, in order to study music under Hans Swarowsky at the state music academy. He lived on $75 per month and was a descendent of conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim.

He remained at the academy for three years, during which time he also studied the double bass, which he performed in the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Swarowsky recognized Mehta's abilities early on, describing him as a "demoniac conductor" who "had it all." He arranged a student orchestra in seven days and conducted it in a festival at a refugee camp outside of Vienna as a student.

Mehta obtained a diploma in conducting when he was 21 years old in 1957. He entered the Liverpool International Conductor's Competition with 100 participants in 1958 and received first prize. The award was based on a year's work as associate conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which he conducted in 14 concerts, all of which received rave feedback.

He then was a second-place prizewinner at the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts, and then he was named in second place. He attracted the notice of Charles Munch, then the conductor of the Boston Symphony, who later on helped with his career. He conceived an all-Schoenberg performance in 1958, which did so well that he accepted new bookings. Carmen Lasky, a Canadian voice student, was also married in Vienna in the same year.

Personal life

Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. Mervon (since April 2009, Executive Director of Performing Arts for The Royal Conservatory in Toronto) and their daughter, Zarina, are both married. They divorced in 1964. Carmen married Zarin Mehta, formerly the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic, two years after the divorce. Mehta married Nancy Kovack, an American former film and television actress, in July 1969. Mehta, a permanent resident of the United States, maintains his Indian citizenship.

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Alexandra, his second daughter, was born in Los Angeles in 1967, as a result of an affair between Mehta and his two marriages. Ori's son was born in the 1990s as a result of an extra-marital affair in Israel during Mehta's second marriage.

Educational projects

Mehta founded Mifneh (Hebrew for "change"), a music education service for Israeli Arabs, in collaboration with Bank Leumi and the Arab-Israel Bank in 2009. Three schools in Shfaram, the Jezreel Valley, and Nazareth, are participating in the pilot program.

The Mehli Mehta Foundation's Advisor Council is made up of him and his brother Zarin.

Mehta and philanthropist Josef Buchmann founded the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in 2005 as a joint venture between Tel Aviv University and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mehta is the school's honorary president and has been active since its inception.

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Conducting career

Mehta was asked to substitute for celebrated maestros around the world in 1960 and 1961, with the majority of those concerts receiving critical acclaim. He produced a series for the Vienna Symphony in 1960 and then performed in New York for the first time as the New York Philharmonic.

Mehta took over the Montreal Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor and Music Director in 1960, with the support of Charles Munch. He had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin, and Israel Philharmonic orchestras by 1961. He took the Montreal Symphony on a concert tour to Russia, Paris, and Vienna in 1962. Mehta was the most apprehensive about his Vienna concert, which he described as the "capital of Western music" in his book. His single performance there received a 20-minute ovation, 14 curtain calls, and two encores.

He was named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1961 (LAP), but orchestral conductor Georg Solti was not consulted on the appointment and resigned in protest, but orchestra conductor Georg Solti was not informed and resigned in protest. When Mehta began directing the orchestra, it had been without a permanent conductor for four years.

Mehta was appointed Music Director of the orchestra and served in that capacity from 1962 to 1978. He appeared in his first season with the orchestra in 1962, making him the youngest to hold that position ever. And as he had also conducted the Montreal Symphony in those early years, he became the first individual to conduct two North American symphony orchestras at the same time.

Mehta, the LAP's first conductor in four years, sought to bring its overall sound closer to that of the Vienna Philharmonic. He succeeded in making the music sound warmer and fuller by encouraging interplay among the musicians, moving positions, giving promotions, and changing seating arrangements. "He inspires the musicians," Jacqueline du Pré, a 21-year-old cellist, said, "He gives you a mystical carpet for you to float on." Kurt Reher recalls Mehta's first appearance with the orchestra: "We were entranced within two beats." This young man seemed to have the talent, as well as the musical skills of a man of 50 or 55."

"Mehta contributed to the conduct of the orchestra a kind of bedazzlement that has no equal in recent times," music critic Alan Rich wrote in 1965. It was a long, teeming, breathless show with a slew of air in it." He also conducted the Met in Carmen, Tosca, and Turandot performances.

He combined the Montreal and Los Angeles orchestras together for a performance of Berlioz's fantastique at Expo 67 in Montreal. Also in that year, he was the world premier of Marvin David Levy's Mourning Becomes Electra.

His schedule was becoming overcrowded by May 1967, and he resigned his Montreal post. He took the 107-member Los Angeles Philharmonic on an eight-week tour, including appearances in Vienna, Paris, Athens, and Bombay. His popularity by 1968, three operas at the Met, three operas at the Met, television appearances in the United States and Italy, five recording sessions, and five orchestras were among his guest appearances at five festivals and five orchestras. In January 1968, Time magazine placed him on its front page. His schedule stayed pretty regular in 1969.

Mehta appeared on Zappa's "200 Motels" and Edgar Varese's Intergrales, at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion basketball stadium in 1970 with a audience of 12.000 people. There is no approved recording, though some bootlegs do exist.

Mehta was the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1978 and remained there until 1991.

In 1977, he became the music director of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). In 1961, he appeared at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time. He performed with the orchestra in 1966, and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he returned to Israel to perform a number of special concerts to "demonstrate brotherhood" with its people. He was appointed IPO's Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and Life Director in 1981.

During his five-decade association with the IPO, he has performed it in thousands of concerts in Israel and abroad. He appeared at the IPO in South Lebanon in 1982, when Arabs rushed onstage to hug the performers. He held it during the Gulf War in 1991, before the audience had gas masks; in 2007, it was mainly Arab audience in Nazareth. He claims to have a "deep kinship" with Israel's musicians and the Jewish people's "spirit and tradition." The IPO, according to him, is "something I do for my heart." "How I would love to see that picture of Arabs and Jews hugging each other," he recalls from earlier years. I'm a optimist thinker. "I know this day will come."

Mehta left the Los Angeles Philharmonic to serve as the music director for the New York Philharmonic in 1978 (NYP). One of the reasons he wanted to direct the NYP was because it enabled him to try new things, such as moving the orchestra to Harlem. Each year, they appeared at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman, and Kathleen Battle were accompanying the orchestra with Mehta for various concerts. He was with NYP from 1991 to 1991.

Mehta served as the chief conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence from 1985 to 2017. He performed with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1998 to 2006. The Munich Philharmonic honoured him as its Honorary Conductor. Mehta has been the principal conductor of the Palau de les Arts, the new opera house of the Ciutat des Arts i les Ciències in Valencia, Spain, since 2005.

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He began directing the Bavarian State Opera in 1998 because it was "another panorama for me" to be involved in the running of an opera house, according to him.

In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Orchestra del Teatro di Roma in Rome's first ever Three Tenors concert, and he returned to the tenors in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. He produced Tosca, the 1992 production in which each act took place in the authentic setting and at the actual time given in the score. Catherine Malfitano appeared in the title role, while Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi and Ruggero Raimondi appeared in the film. On Saturday, Act I was telecast live from Sant'Andrea Valle, Rome's Basilica della Valle; act II was telecast live from the Castel Sant'Angelo, also known as Hadrian's Tomb; act III was telecast live from the Castel Sant'Angelo at 9:40 p.m.; no. televised from Rome's Basilica della Valle, beginning at noon on Saturday, televance

Mehta conducted the Mozart Requiem with the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at Sarajevo's National Library in June 1994, in a fundraising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav Wars. He conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 2 on August 29, 1999. 2 (Resurrection), at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar, with the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra playing together.

He performed in Mumbai (Mumbai) with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1984 and with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in November-December 1994, as soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. Mehta appeared in 1997 and 1998 in Shanghai, China, where they saw the opera Turandot performed in its true surroundings in the Forbidden City, with over 300 extras and 300 troops. In Mehta's documentary The Turandot Project, the production of this film was chronicled.

Mehta was a guest conductor for the American Young Artists Orchestra.

Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed in Chennai (formerly Madras) on the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26, 2005. The German consulate in Chennai and the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe-Institut arranged this tsunami memorial concert. This year was his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted Mehta's performance at The Proms in London in 2011, causing the BBC to suspend live radio broadcast coverage of the event for the first time in Proms history. Mehta appeared with the Bavarian State Orchestra at a special concert, Ehsaas e Kashmir, held by the German Embassy in India in September. Mehta and the orchestra renounced their usual price for this performance.

He returned to Chennai in October 2015 to perform with the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) at the Madras Music Academy.

In 2016, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra gave two concerts conducted by Mehta as part of the 33rd Harbin Summer Music Festival at Harbin Concert Hall.

Mehta's tenure as music director will come to an end in December 2016. He now has the title of music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic.

Mehta will conduct the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) in Sydney and Melbourne in August 2022. He will also be directing the AWO at the Edinburgh International Festival and the BBC Proms 2022.

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Honours and awards

• In 1965, he received an honorary doctorate from Sir George Williams University, which later became Concordia University.
• Mehta's name is mentioned in the song Billy the Mountain on the 1972 album Just Another Band from L.A. by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. Cellist Kurt Reher, who played when Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was also a guest musician with The Mothers of Invention.
• At the Israel Prize ceremony in 1991, Mehta was awarded a special prize in recognition of his unique devotion to Israel and to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1995, he became a Laureate of the Wolf Prize in Arts. In 1999, Mehta was presented the "Lifetime Achievement Peace and Tolerance Award" of the United Nations.
• The Government of India honoured Mehta in 1966 with the Padma Bhushan and in 2001 with India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan.
• In September 2006 the Kennedy Center announced Mehta as one of the recipients of that year's Kennedy Center Honors, presented on 3 December 2006.
• In February 2007, Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University.
• Mehta is an honorary citizen of Florence and Tel Aviv. He was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997. In 2001 he has bestowed the title of "Honorary Conductor" of the Vienna Philharmonic and in 2004 the Munich Philharmonic awarded him the same title, as did the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2006. At the end of his tenure with the Bavarian State Opera he was named Honorary Conductor of the Bavarian State Orchestra and Honorary Member of the Bavarian State Opera, and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien, appointed him an honorary member in November 2007.
• Also in 2007 Mehta received the prestigious Dan David Prize. Conductor Karl Böhm awarded Mehta the Nikisch Ring – the Vienna Philharmonic Ring of Honor.
• In October 2008, Mehta received the Praemium Imperiale (World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu), Japan.
• In March 2011, Mehta received the 2,434th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In October 2011 he received the Echo Klassik in Berlin, for his life's work.
• In September 2013, President of India Pranab Mukherjee awarded him the Tagore Award 2013 for his outstanding contribution towards cultural harmony.
• In January 2019, the Los Angeles Philharmonic named Mehta as their Conductor Emeritus.
• In February 2019, the Berlin Philharmonic made Mehta an honorary member as an expression of gratitude for their long association.
• In September 2019, President of Slovenia Borut Pahor conferred the Golden Order of Merit on Zubin Mehta for his contribution to music and the inspiring effort to connect people and nations with this form of art.
• In November 2020, the World Jewish Congress presented Mehta with their fifth Teddy Kollek Award for the Advancement of Jewish Culture.
• In September 2022, received Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia from the Governor General David Hurley in recognition of his eminent service to the Australia-India bilateral relationship and humanity-at-large, particularly in the fields of classical music and philanthropy.