Gilbert Levine

Sir Gilbert Levine, GCSG (born January 22, 1948) is an American conductor.

He is considered an "outstanding personality in the world of international music television."

He has led the PBS concert debuts of the Staatskapelle Dresden, Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, WDR Symphony Orchestra, and the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the PBS premieres of works including the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, Bach Magnificat in D, Haydn Creation, and Bruckner Symphony 9.

Levine was born in Brooklyn, New York, attended the Juilliard School of Music, and holds an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a M.A. degree from Yale University.

He studied bassoon with Stephen Maxym and Sherman Walt, piano with Gilbert Kalish, Music History with Lewis Lockwood and Arthur Mendel, Music Theory with Edward T. Cone, Peter Westergaard and Milton Babbitt, ear training and score reading with Nadia Boulanger, Renée Longy, and Luise Vosgerchian, and conducting with Jacques-Louis Monod and Franco Ferrara.

Levine was assistant to Sir Georg Solti in London at the London Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), and in Paris with l'Orchestre de Paris.

He was a protégé of Klaus Tennstedt.

Levine has lectured at institutions including Harvard University, Princeton University, Yale University, Stanford University, University of Oxford, Columbia University, University of California, Davis, Duquesne University, and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

He has taught conducting both at Yale and the Manhattan School of Music.

His conducting students have included the American composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

Levine maintains current ties to his two alma maters.

He serves as a member of the Princeton University Department of Music Advisory Council and has recently been appointed to a fifth term as Associate Fellow of Trumbull College, Yale by the Yale Corporation, that university's highest governing body.

Early in his career, Levine conducted orchestras both in Europe and the United States, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the NDR Sinfonie-Orchester Hamburg, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin.

Levine first gained international notice when he became conductor and artistic director of the Kraków Philharmonic in 1987.

He was the first American chief conductor of an Eastern European orchestra.

His appointment was initially controversial because of the general consensus that Krzysztof Penderecki forced the choice of Levine on the orchestra.

Under his leadership, the orchestra toured Europe, the major concert halls of North America, and the Far East, including the first visit by any Polish orchestra to South Korea.

Under Levine, the Kraków Philharmonic also performed for the first time with such soloists as Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, and Shlomo Mintz.

In 1988, while working in Kraków, Levine met Pope John Paul II, at the latter's invitation.

He concluded his tenure in Kraków in 1993.

In 1993, Levine conducted for the Pope at World Youth Day in Denver.

That program included the first performances of works by Bernstein, Barber, and Copland at any Papal event, and was televised worldwide.

In 1994, Levine (whose mother-in-law was an Auschwitz survivor) conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the historic "Papal Concert to Commemorate the Shoah (Holocaust)," which marked the first official Vatican commemoration of the Nazi genocide of World War II.

Featured guest artists were Lynn Harrell and Richard Dreyfuss, who narrated an excerpt from Leonard Bernstein's Third Symphony (Kaddish).

In 1994, for his services to the Pope and to the Vatican, he was invested as a Knight Commander of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great (KCSG), the highest Papal knighthood accorded to a non-ecclesiastical musician since Mozart.

Upon John Paul II's death, Levine called him a friend and "an incredible sustenance for me."

In 1998, Levine led members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and, with the special permission of Pope John Paul II, the ancient Capella Giulia Choir of St. Peter's Basilica, in concerts to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the founding of Mission San Luis Rey in California.

These concerts constituted the first visit of this 500-year-old choir to the Western Hemisphere, and were broadcast on NPR's "Performance Today".

Other Papal concerts at the Vatican directed by Levine included the first of two concerts celebrating the Catholic Church's Grand Jubilee in 2000 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Philharmonia Chorus performing parts one and two of Haydn's The Creation Levine conducted a 2003 televised musical celebration of the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's pontificate with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Saint Peter's Basilica, a concert which aired on American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

In 2004, Levine conducted his last concert for Pope John Paul II, leading the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and members of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, the London Philharmonic Choir, the Kraków Philharmonic Choir, and the Ankara Polyphonic Choir in the "Papal Concert of Reconciliation."

This event was the first time that any American orchestra had performed for any Pope in the Vatican.

The concert, broadcast worldwide, included Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 Resurrection, and Abraham, a specially-commissioned motet by John Harbison.

Over the years of his relationship with John Paul II, Levine became known as "the Pope's Maestro."

In 2005, Levine conducted a memorial concert for the Pontiff, which was broadcast on PBS.

That same year, Pope John Paul II's successor, Pope Benedict XVI, honoured Levine with the Silver Star of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (KC*SG), the highest papal distinction received by a Jew in the history of the Vatican.

The Pope subsequently asked Levine to conduct the concert commemorating the 10th anniversary of his Pontificate.

This concert was originally broadcast by RAI, Italian television, and throughout Europe via Eurovision.

It was subsequently broadcast and re-broadcast on Public Television in the U.S. over the next 17 years.

On January 31, 2016, Pope Francis honored Levine as a Pontifical Knight Grand Cross of the Equestrian Order of Saint Gregory the Great (GCSG), the highest rank of the order and one very rarely bestowed.

He is the second artist so honored.