Delta David Gier

Over his last two seasons as assistant conductor, he served as both host and conductor for two complete series of the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, becoming the first person to do so since 1952.

Delta David Gier (born April 3, 1960) is an American conductor.

Gier is Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, following 15 seasons with the New York Philharmonic as an assistant conductor.

He has directed most major orchestras in the United States and has worked extensively with orchestras across Central and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Gier has received national recognition as an advocate for both contemporary classical music and the role of local arts organizations in intercultural community building.

Gier was born in Sherman, Texas, on April 3, 1960, to Jonelle and Delta Warren Gier.

He began studying trumpet with Dick Jorgenson at the age of 15, starting with instruction privately and at Interlochen Arts Camp.

In the 1980s, Gier was a conducting student at both the Tanglewood Music Center and the Aspen Music Festival, where he studied with many acclaimed conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur, Erich Leinsdorf, Seiji Ozawa, and Gustav Meier.

In 1984, Meier invited Gier to pursue postgraduate studies with him at the University of Michigan.

After completing his Master of Music degree, Gier apprenticed with the Philadelphia Orchestra for the 1986–87 season at the invitation of Riccardo Muti.

Gier began his conducting career as a Fulbright Scholar in Eastern Europe from 1988 to 1990.

During this period he led numerous critically acclaimed performances with orchestras in Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and Turkey, including a tour with the State Philharmonic of Košice in former Czechoslovakia.

Several of these concerts served to introduce Eastern European audiences to American music: Gier conducted the Romanian premiere of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring with the Bucharest Philharmonic  and the Turkish premiere of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra of Ankara.

In 1994, Music Director Kurt Masur selected Gier to be an assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, a role he maintained for 15 seasons under the direction of both Masur and Lorin Maazel.

During his tenure at the Philharmonic, Gier pursued a variety of guest engagements, including a tour of over 60 performances of Bizet’s Carmen with San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theater in 1997.

Also in 1997, Gier participated in the National Conductor Preview at the invitation of the League of American Orchestras.

Gier’s debut performance with the Philharmonic was in the summer of 2000, conducting a program including Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet suite and Bernstein's overture to Candide.

The concert was reviewed positively in The Journal News, where Gier was praised at length for "guiding splendid performances": "Gier demonstrated the ability to control this orchestra, not always an easy task, and put together interesting interpretations. He set up the musical climaxes masterfully[. ...] In his hands, the energy was held in check until the last possible moment and the concluding whirlwind was very effective."

Gier conducted many educational concerts with the New York Philharmonic, as well as with the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In 2004, Gier was appointed Music Director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO), which has grown substantially and garnered national attention under his leadership.

During his first season, Gier instituted a concert series the Wall Street Journal recognized as "an unprecedented programming innovation", wherein each concert featured music by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

The series continued for the next six years, expanding to include residencies with composers John Corigliano, Jennifer Higdon, Steven Stucky, Zhou Long, and Paul Moravec.

In 2005, Gier began developing the Lakota Music Project (LMP), an ongoing SDSO initiative intended to address tensions between South Dakota's white and indigenous populations, with the guidance of Lakota and Dakota tribal elders and academics.

Through reciprocal explorations of the Western classical canon, traditional Lakota music, and contemporary compositions, the LMP has occasioned continuous artistic collaboration in the form of musical partnerships between SDSO ensembles and Native American musicians like Dakota cedar flutist Brian Akipa, the New Porcupine Singers, and the Creekside Singers.

In 2006, the SDSO received the first of seven ASCAP Awards for Programming of Contemporary Music.

The LMP's genesis was the subject of an hour-long documentary produced and aired by South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) in 2009.

A 2022 SDPB feature covered the Music Composition Academies.

The Lakota Music Project is the foremost of several SDSO initiatives to receive support through grants from entities such as the Mellon Foundation in 2011  and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2017.

In 2012, he was selected for ASCAP’s John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music and in 2022 he received the Ditson Conductor’s Award for the advancement of American music.

In Columbia University’s presentation of the latter award, Gier is described as"a widely renowned conductor who is remarkable in his dedication to contemporary American music. [… H]e has shown an unstinting commitment to programming American orchestral works, many of them premieres. He has developed the program Bridging Cultures, which is devoted to promoting the music of indigenous and diverse communities. He is a model of the engaged conductor."

In 2012, Gier was personally awarded ASCAP’s John S. Edwards Award for Strongest Commitment to New American Music in recognition of his work with the SDSO.

In 2016, the SDSO won the Bush Prize for Community Innovation; the Bush Foundation's accompanying case study booklet praises the organization as "a visionary leader when it comes to partnering with the community to help realize the healing power of music. It thrives because it transforms the traditional, transactional orchestra model into one that is focused on service to the community."

Gier's innovative pursuit of audience engagement was the focus of the April 2023 episode of 1A's More Than Music radio program on NPR, "Shostakovich in South Dakota", which details "how Delta David Gier and the South Dakota Symphony framed Shostakovich's wartime Leningrad Symphony in order to maximize its pertinence for his Sioux Falls audience."

Gier also facilitated the creation of the SDSO's Music Composition Academies, an outgrowth of the LMP that began in 2017 and continues to provide annual summer programs for Lakota and Dakota high school students to work with composer-mentors who help each participant compose a piece for string quartet or woodwind quintet.

SDSO ensembles then perform the compositions in the students' schools, and some have been included in the Symphony's main-stage concerts.

The LMP has given concerts across the state’s cities and reservations, as well as in Washington, D.C., in a 2019 series of concerts at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the National Cathedral.

The LMP was also profiled in The Washington Post in 2019.

A self-titled album featuring five compositions commissioned for the Lakota Music Project was released in 2022 by the label innova Recordings.

Gier has derived a model from the Lakota Music Project, which has served as the SDSO’s flagship Bridging Cultures Program.

Cross-cultural collaborations with Arab, Chinese, and South Asian communities, as well as Sudanese and Somali refugee communities, have featured tabla artist Zakir Hussain, oud artist Simon Shaheen, composers Malek Jandali, Chen Yi, and Zhou Long, and the Bernard Woma ensemble.