JAMES GAFFIGAN
CONDUCTOR
“Gaffigan — throughout the concert, drawing out playing that was controlled and urgent but also delicate and natural — emphasized the eerily seductive beauties of this grand, colorful, astringent score, with all its subdued sourness and shivery anxiety.”
Recognized worldwide for his natural ease and extraordinary collaborative spirit, American conductor James Gaffigan has attracted international attention for his prowess as a conductor of both symphony orchestras and opera. The mutual trust he builds with artists empowers them to cultivate the highest art possible.
Gaffigan is uniquely positioned with Music Directorships at two international opera houses. He is the General Music Director of Komische Oper Berlin, where he begins his second season in 2024-2025, and Music Director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, where he enters his fourth season off widely acclaimed productions of Wozzeck, La Bohème, and Tristan und Isolde.
In his 2024-2025 season with Komische Oper Berlin, Gaffigan leads productions of Sweeney Todd, The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, among others. At Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, he conducts a varied season of programming including a staging of Der fliegende Holländer. Guest engagements include his debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and returns to the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Luzerner Sinfonieorchester. In the United States, he makes return engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Houston Grand Opera.
During the 2023/24 season, Gaffigan made returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony. In Summer 2023, Gaffigan led the Metropolitan Opera in their production of La Bohème, as well as the Orchestra de Paris with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra. Other recent orchestral appearances include London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Norske Opera and Ballet, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin, Czech Philharmonic and Luzerner Symphonieorchester. In North America, Gaffigan regularly works with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, among others.
Gaffigan marked his final season as Principal Guest Conductor of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera in 2022/23. In 2021, he finished his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, a position he held for 10 years, where he raised the orchestra’s international profile with highly successful recordings and tours abroad. A regular at the Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Opéra National de Paris, Gaffigan has also conducted the Zürich Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Staatsoper Hamburg, Dutch National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Santa Fe Opera.
Gaffigan was first prize winner of the 2004 Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition, which opened Europe’s doors to him as a young American. In 2009, he completed a three-year tenure as Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, a position created for him by Michael Tilson Thomas. Prior to that, he was Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, where he worked with Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. Gaffigan is an alumnus of the Aspen Music Festival’s Aspen Conducting Academy and the Tanglewood Music Center.
Passionate about music education and a product of the New York City public school system, Gaffigan grew up in New York City and studied at the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art before pursuing his conducting studies. He believes that access to music education is the method by which America’s concert halls will finally begin to reflect our community and shrink the racial and gender gaps that exist in the performing arts today.
Born in 1994 in Seoul, Seong-Jin Cho started learning the piano at 6 and gave his first public recital at age 11. In 2009, he became the youngest-ever winner of Japan’s Hamamatsu International Piano Competition. In 2011, he won Third Prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow at the age of 17. In 2012, he moved to Paris to study with Michel Béroff at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique from which he graduated in 2015. He is now based in Berlin.
“This was very much a duet with a New York Philharmonic that played under Gaffigan with transparency, warmth and restraint.”
“As a podium technician, the guy’s a beacon. Gaffigan uses his whole body to conduct, and when it’s a program like this, that means hip-swinging, two-stepping and Bernstein-bouncing. His body language projected the evening’s many rhythms — often layered simultaneously — with clarion lucidity. He was also a genial colleague.”
“Gaffigan offered an intense, full-throated reading, with an emphasis on galvanic fortissimos, fiercely stated string playing and extreme dynamic contrasts. He seemed intent on keeping the music moving along, especially in the enormous first movement, but he did not sacrifice the profundities of its final pages.”
“James Gaffigan’s conducting is simply terrific—big in character and bringing out all of the drama and humor of Mozart’s glorious score with the Lyric Opera Orchestra.”
“Gaffigan threaded that needle seamlessly across the architecture of the hour-long work, launching with a Mozartian opener notable for its lightness, jollity and balance.”
“Under James Gaffigan, the orchestra delivered a knock-out performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's scintillating score in a two-hour, interval-less showpiece of instrumental virtuosity.”
“The Komische Oper orchestra sounded fantastic under conductor James Gaffigan, who kept everything moving with terrific zing.”
“James Gaffigan and his orchestra are infectiously focused on making the most of their evening in Neukölln.”
“An inspired James Gaffigan extracted the best from the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana.”
“Gaffigan made the pit sing and signed off on one of his best nights in Valencia with a direction full of colors, nuances and those fragrances and subtleties that are the mark of Massenet’s very French music.”
“Gaffigan’s command of colour, rhythm, structure, and harmony are superb.”
“Under Gaffigan’s direction, the outlasting Debussy work — La Mer — was magnificent. Fineness and strenuousness balanced beautifully, the instrumental balance itself supporting every gesture. The final effect was like that of a pointillist painting — impressive whether seen from a distance or up close, at the level of a speck.”
“Guest conductor James Gaffigan led Friday’s concert, which opened with the finest performance of a Mozart symphony I’ve ever heard from the orchestra.”
“Gaffigan was a commanding presence as he confidently led the musicians. Gaffigan’s clear view and pacing gave excellent shape to the overall work. The audience rose instantly with bravos and the orchestra allowed him to take his own bow.”
“Gaffigan guided the orchestra through it all in fine form, and the orchestra’s response was an excellent one.”
“Gaffigan flaunted an unbridled enthusiasm in Thursday’s program. He also showed an exacting dedication to music-making. Conducting at times with his eyes closed, lovingly shaping phrases with cradled arms, he brought out the tenderness and delicacy of Beethoven’s orchestration. As the music turned stormy, the ensemble didn’t round the edges of thunderous, booming passages, giving articulated notes a stalactite edge.”
“I think communicating music is, of course, important but bringing people together and getting people to move together and breathe together is a beautiful job. I love my job, but it’s hard to put into words what it is we do up there but at the end of the day it’s bringing people together and whatever language they speak or whatever place they’re from, somehow we’re all coming together and doing the same piece of music in a very united fashion.”