GRAMMY^®-winner conductor and composer José Serebrier is one of today’s most recorded classical artists. He has received 39 GRAMMY^® nominations in recent years. When José Serebrier was 21 years old, Leopold Stokowski hailed him as ‘the greatest master of orchestral balance’. After five years as Stokowski’s associate conductor at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Serebrier accepted an invitation from George Szell to become the composer-in-residence of the Cleveland Orchestra for Szell’s last two seasons. Szell discovered Serebrier when he won the Ford Foundation American Conductors Competition (together with James Levine). Serebrier was music director of America’s oldest music festival, in Worcester, Massachusetts, until he organized Festival Miami, and served as its artistic director for many years. In that capacity, Serebrier commissioned many works, including Elliot Carter’s String Quartet No 4, and conducted many American and world premières. Serebrier has made international tours with The Juilliard Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Toulouse Chamber Orchestra, National Youth Orchestra of Spain, Russian National Orchestra and others.

Serebrier’s first recording, Ives’s Fourth Symphony with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, won a GRAMMY^® nomination. His recording of the Mendelssohn symphonies won the UK Music Retailers Association Award for Best Orchestral Recording, and his series of Shostakovich Film Suites won the Deutsche Schallplatten Award for Best Orchestral Recording. Soundstage magazine selected Serebrier’s recording of Scheherazade with the LPO as the Best Audiophile Recording of 2001. He has recorded with most major orchestras. Serebrier Conducts Prokofiev, Beethoven and Tchaikowsky, filmed at the Sydney Opera, has been shown over 50 times on US television. Serebrier conducted at the 2004 GRAMMY^® Awards ceremony in Los Angeles, telecast live to 175 countries. Serebrier presently records for Naxos, BIS, Warner Classics, RPO Records and Sony/BMG. His First Symphony was premièred by Leopold Stokowski (who premièred several of his works) when Serebrier was 17, as a last-minute replacement for the then still unplayable Ives Fourth Symphony. His music has been recorded by conductors such as John Eliot Gardiner, among others. Serebrier made his US conducting début at 19 with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, performing his Symphony No 2 ‘Partita’. His new Third Symphony, Symphonie Mystique, received a GRAMMY^® nomination for the Best New Composition of 2004. It was premièred at Carnegie Hall, NY in 2005. His Carmen Symphony CD, with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, won the Latin GRAMMY^® for Best Classical Album of 2004. The French music critic Michel Faure has written a new book about José Serebrier, published in France by L’Harmattan. Serebrier’s first recording with the New York Philharmonic, on Warner Classics, was released in 2006, and his new recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, for Sony Classical was released in 2007.

For more information, please visit www.joseserebrier.com.

Interview with José Serebrier on MusicWeb International, February 2007

José Serebrier column on International Record Review

See José Serebrier conducting JS Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor on YouTube