Zdenek Mácal

Czech-born Zdeněk Mácal has been the Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 1993. He has appeared as guest conductor with over 150 orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic, L'Orchestre de Paris, National Orchestra of France, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Stockholm Philharmonic, Hamburg Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, and NHK Symphony Orchestra. He has also taken part in major international festivals including those in Vienna, Lucerne, Edinburgh, Prague, Zurich, Besançon, Athens, Montreux, Holland and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico.

Since his American début with the Chicago Symphony in 1972, Mácal has conducted widely throughout North America, regularly leading the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, National Symphony, St Louis Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and the symphony orchestras of Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Atlanta, Montréal and Toronto.

His most recent seasons have included guest appearances with the St Louis Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, National Symphony, New World Symphony, the Juilliard Orchestra, Manhattan School of Music, and internationally with the Vienna SymphonyOrchestra, Toronto Symphony, Montreal Symphony, National Orchestre France, Frankfurter Museum-Gesellschaft Orchestra, and the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Recording for Delos, Mácal has led the NJSO in Dvořák's Stabat Mater, and Glière's Symphony No 2 and Red Poppy Suite, and a Mussorgsky programme including Pictures at an Exhibition, scenes from Khovanshchina, and Dream of the Peasant Gritzko (Schebalin's choral/orchestral version of Night on Bald Mountain). All of these recordings have elicited rave reviews. Mácal has also recorded for the EMI, French Decca, Supraphon, Koss and Deutsche Grammophon labels.

Mácal has been heard with the Milwaukee Symphony in broadcasts throughout the US and has been heard with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in national radio broadcasts on the National Public Radio network.

Zdeněk Mácal, who is now a US citizen, was born in 1936 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. At the age of four, he began violin studies with his father, and went on to attend the Brno Conservatory and the Janácek Academy of Music where he graduated with the highest honors in 1960. Mácal first received international attention by winning two prestigious contests, the 1965 International Conducting Competition in Besançon, France, and the 1966 Dmitri Mitropoulos Competition in New York, chaired by the late Leonard Bernstein.