David Robertson – conductor, artist, thinker, and American musical visionary – occupies some of the most prominent platforms on the international music scene. A highly sought-after podium figure in the worlds of opera, orchestral music, and new music, Robertson is celebrated worldwide as a champion of contemporary composers, an ingenious and adventurous programmer, and a masterful communicator whose passionate advocacy for the art form is widely recognized. A consummate and deeply collaborative musician, Robertson is hailed for his intensely committed music making.
His conducting career is closely linked to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, one of the oldest symphony orchestras in the United States, which he led for thirteen years until 2018. During this time, he managed to establish fruitful relationships between the orchestra and a wide range of artists, and in 2014, among other things, he recorded a CD with the orchestra featuring John Adams’ City Noir for the Nonesuch label, for which he received a Grammy Award. Between 2014 and 2019, he was also chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, bidding farewell to this position with a performance of American and French compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries.
He served as a guest conductor with both orchestras during the 2025/2026 season, performing works by Bernstein, Nielsen, Beethoven, and his own piano concerto entitled Light forming. Other international activities this season include his return to the New York Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; he also conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic and a number of North American orchestras (Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Nashville Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, Utah Symphony) and conducted the Czech Philharmonic at the Smetana’s Litomyšl Festival.
The 2025–2026 season will also be David Robertson’s eighth academic year as Director of the Conducting Studies and Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the Juilliard School in New York, where he also became a member of the newly formed Advisory Council of the Chinese campus in 2019. In February 2026, he performed with the Juilliard Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
He also has a long-standing relationship with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Since 1996, when he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera with Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, he has presented a number of successful performances there. In 2018, for example, he conducted the premiere of Phelim McDermott’s famous production, which set Mozart’s opera Così fan tutte in the 1950s on Coney Island. He also collaborates with other prestigious opera houses such as La Scala in Milan, Théâtre du Châtelet, Bavarian State Opera, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, and the San Francisco and Santa Fe opera houses.
Robertson is the recipient of numerous musical and artistic awards, and in 2010 was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Government of France. He is devoted to supporting young musicians and has worked with students at the festivals of Aspen, Tanglewood, Lucerne, at the Paris Conservatoire, Music Academy of the West, and the National Orchestral Institute. In 2014, he led the Coast to Coast tour of Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA.
Born in Santa Monica, California, David Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. He is married to pianist Orli Shaham, and lives in New York.
