John Axelrod
Conductor
"John Axelrod is a highly imaginative and dynamic musician, whose rich musicological background and historical insights combine with intellectual drive and charismatic enthusiasm for people and for life, to get probing, rigorous and richly characterized interpretations.” (Pizzicato): With more than twenty-five years of experience conducting nearly 200 orchestras worldwide, John Axelrod has established himself as one of today's leading international conductors. His extraordinarily diverse repertoire, from core classics, both orchestral and operatic, to contemporary to crossover, his innovative programming themes, musical depth and charismatic performance style have been widely praised and recognized by both audiences and critics. In 2020, John Axelrod received the ICMA Special Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions and interpretations.
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Mr. Axelrod continued his over a decade long love story with Japan, returning in October through December 2023 to both the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, The Tokyo College of Music Orchestra, the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa and the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra, and making his debut with the Sendai Philharmonic to perform The Samurai of Seville, a double concerto for Spanish guitar, Japanese Koto and narrator in both Japanese and Spanish, composed by José Maria Gallardo del Rey and based on the novel by John J. Healey, about the 1613 historical voyage of 12 Samurai from Sendai to Seville. John Axelrod commissioned the work in 2019 and premiered it in 2021 with the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra.
John Axelrod also returns twice to open the 2023-24 season of the Romanian Radio Orchestra with an all-Rachmaninoff programme and again in February with Brahms, and continues his long relationship with the Belgrade Philharmonic, also returning twice this season with Bartók and Korngold. Other season highlights include his annual returns to the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano in January 2024, of which he was Principal Guest Conductor, with the The Firebird by Stravinsky, and as the conductor of the RAI Pops with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI in Torino in June.
John Axelrod was unanimously elected in 2022 as the Principal Conductor of the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra, with a unique open-ended contract. From 2018 until 2023, he served as the Principal Guest Conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra. From 2014 until 2020, Mr. Axelrod was the Artistic and Musical Director of the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla. Other positions included Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano 2011-2018, Principal Conductor of the Pacific Music Festival 2016-2018, Music Director of the NHK Jazz at the Metropolitan Theater 2014-2016, Music Director of the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire 2009-2013, Music Director of "Hollywood in Vienna" with the ORF Vienna Radio Orchestra 2009-2011, Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Theater 2004-2009, as First Conductor of Sinfonietta Cracovia 2001-2009 and as Founder and Artistic Director of his hometown Houston’s OrchestraX 1997-2003.
Invitations and recordings with orchestras also include Berlin’s Radio Symphony Orchestra, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, Filarmonica della Scala, Teatro La Fenice Orchestra in Venice, Orchestre de Paris, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, Weimar Staatskapelle and the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, among others.In the USA, Mr. Axelrod has conducted the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra among others. He debuted in 2018 to great acclaim with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and returned with the Philharmonia Orchestra to the Teatro alla Scala for the MITO Festival 2022. Other important regular festival engagements include the Enescu, Salzburg, Lucerne, Montreux Jazz, Beethoven Easter and the Schleswig Holstein festivals.
Mr. Axelrod’s opera activity includes Bernstein's Candide at Théâtre du Châtelet, Teatro alla Scala and Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Eugene Onegin at Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny at the Rome Opera, and Martinu’s Mirandolina at Teatro la Fenice. For the Lucerne Festival, other operas conducted include Rigoletto, The Rake's Progress, Don Giovanni, the Three-Penny Opera, Falstaff and Idomeneo. He conducted Gianni Schicchi to open the 2020 Puccini Festival and returned in 2021 to conduct a new production of Turandot,directed by Daniele Abbado.
John Axelrod has recorded core and contemporary repertoire for Sony Classical, Warner Classics, Naxos, Ondine, Universal, Naïve, and Nimbus, and released a cycle of Brahms Symphonies and Clara Schumann lieder with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and vocalists Dame Felicity Lott, Nicole Cabell, Indra Thomas and Wolfgang Holzmair, entitled Brahms Beloved (on Telarc). In 2023, a recording with the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra was released to critical acclaim on Orchid Classics, featuring the two versions of Robert Schumann’s Symphony no. 4. Entitled Schumann 41/51: Florestan and Eusebius, the recording explores how the composer’s bi-polar disorder influenced the original and revised versions of this work, which provides a compelling reason for the first time in recorded discography that both are released on the same recording, resulting in a 2023 ICMA Best Orchestral Recording nomination.
Actively committed to working with young professional musicians for over three decades, Mr. Axelrod has toured with the Schleswig Holstein Festival Orchestra to the Salzburg Festival, the Santander Orchestra and the Sinfonia Iuventus in Poland, the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana in Italy, the Accademia della Scala to Muscat, the NordDeutsche Junge Philharmonie in Germany, and the Vienna Jeunesse Orchester in Austria.
John Axelrod graduated in 1988 from Harvard University. Trained personally by Leonard Bernstein in 1982, he also studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Ilya Musin in 1996 and was mentored by Christoph Eschenbach from 1997 until 2000 when he made his professional debut as assistant conductor for Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival.
