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Zubin Mehta (b. April 29, 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western
classical music.
Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, the son of
Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding
conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Zubin is an alumnus of St Mary's School
(I.C.S.E.), Mazagoan, Mumbai. Zubin initially intended to study medicine, but
eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under the eminent
instructor Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Zubin were conductor
Claudio Abbado and conductor/pianist Daniel Barenboim. In 1958, he made his
conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting
Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of
the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. Other
appointments followed: Musical Director the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra from
1962 to 1978; the New York Philharmonic from 1978 to 1991, becoming the longest
holder of the latter post. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra appointed Mehta its
Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for
Life in 1981. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, he was Music Director of the
Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra named him its
Honorary Conductor.
Zubin Mehta received praise early in his career for dynamic interpretations of the
large scale symphonic music of Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and
Franz Schmidt. He has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist, Ravi
Shankar's Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
His conducting is also renowned as being flamboyant and forceful in
performance.
In 1990, he conducted the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the
Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in the first ever Three Tenors concert in
Rome, joining the tenors again in 1994 at the Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles. In June
1994, Mehta performed the Mozart Requiem, along with the members of the Sarajevo
Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at the ruins of Sarajevo's National Library, in a
fund raising concert for the victims of armed conflict and remembrance of the
thousands of people killed in the Yugoslav wars. On August 29, 1999, he conducted
Mahler Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection), at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration
camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. He toured his native
country India and home city Mumbai (Bombay) in 1984, with the New York Philharmonic
Orchestra, and again in November-December 1994, with the Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra, along with soloists Itzhak Perlman and Gil Shaham. In 1997 and 1998,
Mehta worked in collaboration with Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on a
production of the opera Turandot by Giacomo Puccini which they took to Florence,
Italy and then to Beijing, China where it was staged, in its actual surroundings,
in the Forbidden City with over 300 extras and 300 soldiers. for eight historic
performances. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called
The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated.
On 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Zubin Mehta
along with the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai
(formerly called Madras) at the world famous "Madras Music Academy". This special
Tsunami memorial concert was organised by the Madras German consulate along with
the Max-Mueller Bhavan/Goethe institute. The team performed to a packed hall of
select invitees. Nearly 3000 people turned up including eminent personalities such
as Amartya Sen (Nobel Laureate in economics) and the Tamil Nadu governor, Surjit
Singh Barnala. He also performed in Delhi on December 28 at the Indira Gandhi
Stadium. 2006 will be his last year with the Bavarian State Orchestra.
Mehta has conducted the Vienna New Year's Concert in the years 1990, 1995, 1998 and
2007.
Since 2005 he is the main conductor (together with Lorin Maazel) of the new opera
house of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències of Valencia.
 Personal
life
In 2000 his brother, Zarin Mehta, was appointed executive director of the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra, and is married to Zubin Mehta's first wife.
Mehta is married to Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress. He
has two adult children; son Mervon, and daughter, Zarina, from his first marriage.
His life has been documented in Terry Sanders' film Portrait of Zubin Mehta and in
a book by Martin Bookspan and Ross Yockey entitled Zubin: The Zubin Mehta
Story.
Honours and
awards
In 2001, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Vibhushan, India's
second highest civilian award.
In September, 2006 the Kennedy Center announced Maestro Mehta as one of the
receipients of that year's Kennedy Center Honors. These were presented on December
2, 2006.
On February 3, 2007, Zubin Mehta was the recipient of the Second Annual
Bridgebuilder Award at Loyola Marymount University.
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Zubin
Mehta - Projector - Biography
