About Carlos Kalmar

Carlos Kalmar was appointed Music Director of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra in 2003, and is also Principal Conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago. Until recently he was also Music Director of Vienna’s Tonkunstlerorchester. During his career, he has been Music Director of the Hamburg Symphony, Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Anhaltisches Theater in Dessau, Germany. Carlos Kalmar’s most recent recordings include the 2006 release of the Szymanowski, Martinu and Bartok Violin Concertos with the Grant Park Orchestra and Jennifer Koh, and the 2003 release of the Joachim and Brahms Violin Concertos featuring Rachel Barton and the Chicago Symphony, and American Works for Organ and Orchestra featuring David Schrader and the Grant Park Orchestra (2002), both on the Cedille Records label. Carlos Kalmar was born in Uruguay to Austrian parents. He showed an interest in music at an early age and began studying violin at age six. By age 15 his musical development led him to the Vienna Academy of Music where he studied conducting with Karl Osterreicher. He resides in Portland, Oregon and Vienna.

Author Archive | Carlos Kalmar

TAFTO 2008 Contribution: Carlos Kalmar

By on April 7, 2008 in Conductors, TAFTO 2008

One of my most interesting and inspiring experiences as a conductor happened in China, but it had nothing to do with taking a friend to a concert. It had more to do with taking people in general to a place in life and the arts they didn’t know before. I want to link my Chinese experience to the topic of taking a friend to the orchestra. Taking a friend to the orchestra is really about sharing a meaningful experience, and sometimes that means trusting somebody to lead you into a field with which you are unfamiliar.

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