Gregory Vajda
Biography
Gregory Vajda
Resident Conductor
Hailed as a “young titan” by the Montreal Gazette after conducting the Montreal Symphony in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Gregory Vajda has fast become one of the most sought-after conductors on the international scene. After completing his tenure as assistant conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 2005, Vajda took over as resident conductor of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra at the start of the 2005-06 season. Prior to his position in Milwaukee, he served as founder and artistic advisor of the Valley of the Arts Summer Festival in Hungary, permanent guest conductor of the Hungarian State Opera (1998-2003), principal conductor of the Ernö Dohnányi Symphony Orchestra in Budapest and a member of the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra.
During the 2008-09 season, Vajda is scheduled to conduct La Cenerentola with the Atlanta Opera, as well as orchestra performances of the San Antonio Symphony, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Fairfax Symphony and Symphony Silicon Valley in the United States as well as the Edmonton and Toronto symphonies in Canada. In October 2008 he will lead a performance of Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s Grabstein für Stephan to open the new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. He is also a guest lecturer at the International Bartók Seminar in Budapest with Peter Eötvös.
In addition to leading two subscription concerts with the Oregon Symphony during the 2007-08 season, Vajda conducted performances of Un ballo in maschera for the Montreal Opera and concerts with the Charlotte Symphony and Santa Rosa Symphony. Overseas, he conducted the Budapest Concert Orchestra in a program of American music. His summer engagements included returns to Chicago’s Grant Park Festival and the Round Top Festival in Texas, where he conducted his own orchestral work entitled Duevoe.
Earlier seasons saw Vajda perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra; the Hungarian Radio Orchestra; the Charlotte, Honolulu, Kitchener-Waterloo, Louisville, Milwaukee, Montreal, Omaha and Winnipeg symphonies; the Atlanta Opera; Les Violons du Roy; Ensemble Intercontemporain; the Naumburg Orchestral Concert Series in New York’s Central Park; and the Round Top Festival in Texas, the Woodstock Mozart Festival in Illinois and the Making New Waves Festival in Budapest.
In addition to conducting, Vajda is also a clarinetist and composer. Born in 1973 in Budapest, the son of renowned soprano Veronika Kincses, Gregory Vajda studied clarinet and composition at the Béla Bartók secondary school. He then studied conducting at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music under Professor Ervin Lukács. He was also a conducting pupil of the well-known 20th-century composer and conductor, Péter Eötvös.