Grant Gershon

Hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances, Grant Gershon is currently in his 20th season as artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Since 2020, he has devoted himself especially to the works of forgotten composers in classical music.

A fervent champion of new music, he has conducted world premieres of major works by composers such as John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Lang, Louis Andriessen, Christopher Rouse, Steve Reich, Morten Lauridsen, Ricky Ian Gordon, Gabriela Lena Frank, Shawn Kirchner, Ellen Reid and Chinary Ung.

Grant Gershon is resident conductor of LA Opera. He made his acclaimed debut conducting La traviata in 2009 and has subsequently conducted Il postino, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Les Pêcheurs de perles. He conducted the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha at LA Opera in 2018. In November 2017 he conducted the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West at San Francisco Opera, directed by Peter Sellars; he made his Dutch National Opera debut with the same opera in March 2019.

In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at Trinity Wall Street, as well as in the Great Performers series at the Lincoln Center. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki and Vienna Festivals. He has worked closely with numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta and Simon Rattle, as well as his mentor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

In July 2019, Gershon and the Chorale opened the Salzburg Festival with Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars. In 2022/23, Gershon collaborated again with Sellars in the Chorale’s production of Music to Accompany a Departure.

Grant Gershon’s discography includes a Grammy-winning (Best Choral Performance) disc of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony; two Grammy-nominated recordings — Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (Sony Classical); six commercial recordings with the Master Chorale; and two live performance albums. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major film soundtracks including Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker at the request of composer John Williams.

Grant Gershon received Chorus America’s 2022 Korn Founders Award for his career-spanning leadership in the field of choral music.