David Robertson
About this Artist
David Robertson—conductor, composer, artist, thinker, and American musical visionary—occupies some of the most prominent platforms on the international music scene. A highly sought-after podium figure in the worlds of opera, orchestral music, and new music, Robertson is celebrated worldwide as a champion of contemporary composers, an ingenious and adventurous programmer, and a masterful communicator whose passionate advocacy for the art form is widely recognized. A consummate and deeply collaborative musician, Robertson is hailed for his intensely committed music-making.
To begin the 2023/24 season, Robertson returned to the New York Philharmonic and The Philadelphia Orchestra. He conducted the Seattle Symphony in Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and the second performances of his composition Light forming, a piano concerto written for Orli Shaham and premiered in 2022. In Europe, Robertson conducted the Royal Danish Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and the Czech Philharmonic at the Prague Spring Festival.
Last fall, Robertson began a three-year tenure as the Utah Symphony and Opera’s inaugural Creative Partner, with evolutionary concert ideas at three junctures each season.
The 2023/24 season marks Robertson’s sixth academic year as Director of Conducting Studies, Distinguished Visiting Faculty at The Juilliard School in New York, and he continues his role on the Tianjin Juilliard Advisory Council, an international body created to guide Juilliard’s young Chinese campus.
Robertson completed his transformative 13-year tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2018, having solidified the orchestra’s status as one of the nation’s most enduring and innovative and having reinvigorated its American and European presence through regular touring. He has served in artistic leadership positions at the Orchestre National de Lyon, Ensemble InterContemporain, and BBC Symphony Orchestra. Robertson was a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall, where he has conducted, among others, the Met Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Juilliard Orchestra. He appears regularly in Europe with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and the Staatskapelle Dresden, and at the Berlin Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the BBC Proms, and the Musica Viva Festival in Munich, among others. Beyond his long-standing relationship with the New York Philharmonic, Robertson conducts numerous North American orchestras, including those of Boston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles. He continues his relationship with the New Japan Philharmonic and the China NCPA Orchestra.
Born in Santa Monica, Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. He is married to pianist Orli Shaham and lives in New York.