NEC Philharmonia + Joshua Weilerstein

Artist(s)

NEC alumnus Joshua Weilerstein ’09, ’11 MM enjoys a flourishing guest conducting career across the globe and has forged close relationships with many of the world’s finest orchestras and soloists. He is praised for his expressive and dynamic presence on the podium and for his “intense, eloquently moving and spectacularly knife-edge” performances.  With a repertoire that spans from the Renaissance era to the music of today, he combines a deep love for canonical masterpieces alongside a passionate commitment to uncovering the works of under-represented composers such as Pavel Haas, William Grant Still, William Levi Dawson and Ethel Smyth. He is also a tireless advocate for the music of today, championing the works of Caroline Shaw, Jörg Widmann, Derrick Skye and Christopher Rouse, amongst others. In 2023, Weilerstein began his tenure as Chief Conductor of Denmark’s Aalborg Symphony Orchestra, and in 2024, he took up the position of Music Director of Orchestre National de Lille.

Weilerstein conducts widely across Europe. In Germany, recent highlights have included concerts with Bavarian Radio Symphony, SWR Stuttgart Symphony, NDR Hannover, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Komische Oper Orchestra and this season he makes his debut with the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra. In the UK, in recent seasons, he has conducted the London Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and in 23/24 returns to the BBC Philharmonic and City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras. He also conducts regularly in Scandinavia, France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands, where he returned recently to conduct the Orchestre National de Lille at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Weilerstein was Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne between 2015 and 2021, and as Chief Conductor of the Aalborg Symphony, Weilerstein has recorded William Grant Still’s 1st Symphony as well as a live edition of his popular Sticky Notes Podcast on Dvořák’s New World Symphony.

Weilerstein is also much in demand in the US, where recent highlights included his debut with the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia and return to the San Francisco Symphony in Summer 2023. In past seasons, he has conducted the Seattle Symphony, Philadelphia, and New York Philharmonic orchestras, amongst many others.
Born into a musical family, Weilerstein’s formative experience with classical music was as a violinist on tour to Panama and Guatemala with the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra of Boston, where the orchestra performed for thousands of young people who had never heard a live orchestra concert. This experience sparked a desire in Weilerstein to pursue a career in classical music. While pursuing his master’s degree in violin and conducting at the New England Conservatory, Weilerstein won both the First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen in 2009, and he was subsequently appointed as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2015.

In 2017, inspired by the brilliant musical evangelism practised by Leonard Bernstein, Weilerstein launched a classical music podcast called “Sticky Notes.” The show, for both music lovers and newcomers alike, has become wildly successful with more than 4.5 million downloads in 175 countries.