Edo de Waart

Conductor Edo de Waart began his career in the Netherlands but has led orchestras and operatic productions on several continents. He has held several major positions in the U.S., where he received his first big break. Edo de Waart was born in Amsterdam on June 1, 1941. He grew up in a musical family and took up the oboe as a youth, studying at the Sweelinck Conservatory. He also took conducting and piano courses there, but he focused on the oboe at first, holding associate principal positions with the Amsterdam Philharmonic (now the Netherlands Philharmonic) and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. Taking conducting lessons on the side with Franco Ferrara in Hilversum, de Waart made his conducting debut with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in 1964. That year, he won the Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition in New York, resulting in a one-year engagement as assistant conductor to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic. He founded the Netherlands Wind Ensemble in 1967, and that year, he became co-music director (later music director) of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, remaining with that orchestra until 1979. In 1977, he became music director of the San Francisco Symphony. One of de Waart's early digital recordings came with that orchestra in 1984, with an ECM performance of John Adams' Harmonium. He continued to champion Adams' music through the 1980s and '90s. In San Francisco, he also mounted a complete performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas. From 1986 to 1995, de Waart served as music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. Back in the Netherlands, de Waart was music director of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic from 1989 to 2004. He served as music director of the Sydney Symphony in Australia from 2004 to 2014, departing partly because he was dissatisfied with the acoustics of the Sydney Opera House. He moved to the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra, where he served as chief conductor and artistic director from 2004 to 2012. In 2009, de Waart returned to the U.S., settling in the Milwaukee area with his wife, Rebecca Dopp, and becoming chief conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. His tenure there concluded in 2017, but he remains active with the orchestra as conductor laureate. He also served as chief conductor of deFilharmonie (now the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra) from 2011 to 2016. After several guest appearances, de Waart became the first principal guest conductor of the San Diego Symphony in 2019; he continued to hold that position as of the mid-2020s when he was in his early eighties. Encompassing work with many of the orchestras he has led, de Waart has amassed a vast and varied recording catalog that includes 18th and 19th century orchestral repertory, opera, new works, unusual national traditions (he made several recordings of works by composer Carl Vine with the Sydney Symphony), and Dutch works, such as the ones by Reinbert de Leeuw he recorded with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic on a 2023 release on the Challenge Classics label. By that time, his catalog comprised more than 80 recordings. ~ James Manheim, Rovi