Happy Birthday Kent Nagano!

Nagano has conducted numerous orchestras and opera companies around the world

Today is Kent Nagano's 72nd Birthday!

Nagano is a prominent American conductor with a career spanning several decades. Born on November 22, 1951, in Berkeley, California into a musical family, Nagano studied sociology and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and later pursued postgraduate studies in music at the University of California, San Diego. He also studied at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.

His first major success as a conductor was in 1984 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where Olivier Messiaen appointed Nagano as assistant to conductor Seiji Ozawa for the premiere of his opera Saint François d’Assise. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments, he was the Music Director of the Opéra National de Lyon in France from 1988 to 1998, and Musical Director of The Hallé Orchestra from 1991 to 2000.

Nagano then served as the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 2000 to 2006, and then from 2006 to 2020, he was the Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, where he was credited with revitalizing the orchestra's artistic profile.

Nagano was awarded Grammys for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with Opéra National de Lyon, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra, and Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin. He has worked with labels such as BIS, Decca, Sony Classical, FARAO Classics, and Analekta for many years, and has also recorded CDs with Berlin Classics, Erato, Teldec, Pentatone, Deutsche Grammophon, and Harmonia Mundi.

MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 5 | KENT NAGANO & ORCHESTRE SYMPHONIQUE DE MONTRÉAL