David Zinman is in his fourteenth season as Music Director of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich, having taken up that post in 1995 after many years as a regular guest conductor there. In 1998 he completed a highly successful thirteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. That same year, he became Music Director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he also is Program Director of the recently formed American Academy of Conducting at Aspen.
David Zinman’s extensive discography has earned numerous international honors, including five Grammy awards, two Grand Prix du Disque awards, two Edison Prizes, the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis and a Gramophone Award. With the Tonhalle, he has recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies and concerti (which have sold more than 1 million copies), the complete Strauss tone poems, and the Mahler symphonic cyle.
Born in 1936, David Zinman graduated from Oberlin Conservatory and pursued advanced work in composition at the University of Minnesota. Conducting studies at the Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Music Center brought him to the attention of Pierre Monteux, who guided his musical development. Monteux gave him his first important conducting opportunities with the London Symphony Orchestra and at the 1963 Holland Festival, where critics hailed him as a major conducting discovery.
David Zinman’s honors include the City of Zurich Art Prize in 2002 for outstanding artistic efforts, becoming the first conductor and the first recipient of non-Swiss nationality; the 1997 recipient of the prestigious Ditson Award from Columbia University, given in recognition of his exceptional commitment to the performance of works by American composers (many of which he has recorded in a series for Decca’s Argo label); and the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.