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Allen Gross, Music Director and Conductor
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The American conductor ALLEN ROBERT GROSS has been lauded world-wide for his imaginative and probing interpretations of the standard and contemporary orchestra and chamber orchestra repertoires. He is in his nineteenth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra in California, during which he has established the orchestra as one of the leading community orchestras in the country. Recent guest invitations have also taken him to China and to Cuba, where he conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica de Matanzas as part of the International Festival of Contemporary Music. His position as Conductor of the Santa Monica Chamber Philharmonia has resulted in highly acclaimed international tours to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. He is also Professor of Music at Occidental College, and a member of the music faculty of the California Institute of Technology.
Born in New York City, Gross began his professional conducting career in Germany, where he served as Musical Director of the Heidelberg Castle Festival, Conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Heidelberg, and held conducting positions in the opera houses of Freiburg and Aachen. With the Junges Kammerorchester Heidelberg he made a number of studio recordings for the South German Radio. Coming to Los Angeles in 1983, he assumed the direction of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony as a member of the music faculties at those institutions.
Gross has a wide range of musical interests. While specializing in the traditional Austro-German and Central European repertoire, he is also an active interpreter of new music, as well as a fervent educator for new audiences. Gross has conducted at Los Angeles' Monday Evening Concerts and the Minnesota Composers Forum in addition to conducting broadcast concerts of new American music from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has also premiered new compositions with the Santa Monica Symphony, the Occidental-Caltech Symphony, and in local and foreign guest conducting appearances.
Gross also has an avid interest in working with developing players. He served as Music Director/Conductor of the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra from 1987 through 1991, and has been the conductor of the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra for the past sixteen years.