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The Los Angeles Philharmonic has announced that Daniel Harding is to be its next music director.
The UK-born Harding, 50, will begin his tenure in the 2027/28 season, with an initial contract for six years. Gustavo Dudamel, the orchestra’s music director since 2009, leaves the role in August 2026 – the Venezuelan conductor is heading east to become music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, but he will retain close connections with the Los Angeles orchestra as its artistic and cultural laureate.
In his new role, Harding will oversee the programming across the organisation, including its presentations at Walt Disney concert hall, the Hollywood Bowl and the Ford, along with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (Yola). He will conduct eight weeks of programming in his first season, increasing to 12 weeks in subsequent years. The orchestra was founded in 1919 and has commissioned and premiered works by composers ranging from Stravinsky and Schoenberg to Lutosławski and John Adams. Over the past 14 years it has won 11 Grammy awards for recordings made with Dudamel.
President and chief executive Kim Noltemy said: “We are immensely proud to welcome Daniel Harding as the LA Phil’s next music director, following an extensive search led by a committee of our musicians, board and staff. He is greatly admired by the orchestra and was the overwhelming choice based on their feedback. His intellectual curiosity, passion for bringing in and engaging with new audiences, global perspective, and talent for nurturing emerging voices directly align with the LA Phil’s mission and vision.”
“Making music with the magnificent LA musicians is a thrill and an inspiration,” said Harding. “Inheriting an orchestra with a tradition that includes Giulini [music director 1978–1984] and Mehta [1962–1978] and shaped most recently by Esa-Pekka Salonen [1992–2009] and Gustavo, is an extraordinary gift. I come to California full of excitement for what we will discover and create together.”
Harding was born in Oxford in 1975. As a teenager he came to the attention of Simon Rattle, who hired him as his assistant at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a year. At 21, he joined the Berlin Philharmonic as Claudio Abbado’s assistant. The same year he became the youngest ever conductor in Proms history.
His subsequent career includes 19 years with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and more than two decades with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which he helped found. He was the principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2007-2017, and enjoys long-established relationships with the Berlin Philharmonic, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Vienna Philharmonic. A renowned opera conductor, he has led critically acclaimed productions at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, London’s Royal Opera House and at the Aix-en-Provence festival and the Salzburg festival.
He is currently music director of Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and, in the US, he has appeared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony. He first conducted the LA Phil in 1997 at the Ojai music festival in a programme of works by Mozart, Schnittke, Schubert and Rameau.
Harding is also a qualified airline pilot, and for the past few years has had a parallel career piloting Airbuses for Air France, and will continue to do so. “One of the things I say about my double life,” he told the Guardian in 2022, “is that it’s OK to take risks in concerts, because there it’s safe to do so.”
“[What] I love about going to work for Air France is that I put on my uniform … and I’m part of the team. And knowing another world, how other people work and having a completely different role is healthy. I’ve learned things about myself and conducting in a year that I didn’t learn in 29 years before as a conductor,” he added.
“Daniel brings an exceptional level of focus and musical insight to his work,” said John Lofton, bass trombone of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and member of the music director search committee. “As musicians, we value his clarity, his respect for the orchestra and the way he invites us into the music.”
Dudamel said: “I’m confident that the brilliance, heart and limitless talent of the LA Phil, which has inspired me for so many years, will be in good hands under Daniel’s musical leadership as they build new worlds of sound together.”
The orchestra’s creative director and former music director Salonen said: “Daniel is absolutely one of the most important conductors of our time … My hope is that the beauty, optimism and openness of Los Angeles proves as transformative for him as it has been for me. I look forward to collaborating with him well into the future.”
As music director designate, Harding will conduct the LA Phil in November 2026 and January 2027 in wide-ranging programmes that include music by Brahms, Bernstein’s Jeremiah symphony, Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra and contemporary composers Thomas Adès and Betsy Jolas.
