Music Director Emeritus, Richard Pittman

Richard Pittman served as Music Director of the New England Philharmonic from 1997 to 2020. During that time, the orchestra won five ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming.

He also served as Music Director of Boston Musica Viva, which he founded and led them to international distinction as one of the best new music ensembles in the world. He made eight European and three California tours with Boston Musica Viva and conducted them at the international festivals of Edinburgh, Holland, Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Bruckner Festival in Linz, Settembre Musica in Turin and at Tanglewood. He and BMV were the recipients of the Laurel Leaf Award in 1991 from the American Composers Alliance for distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music.

Pittman was also Music Director of the Concord Orchestra (MA), a symphony orchestra of 85 musicians with which he conducted a series of 10 concerts per season and which he led on a highly successful tour of Eastern Europe in 1998.

Pittman has been a frequent guest conductor of the BBC, having conducted each BBC Symphony at least twice (London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff). He has also conducted the BBC Singers and the BBC Concert Orchestra in London. Some of his other engagements include the Kirov Opera Orchestra in St. Petersburg, the Royal Philharmonic London, the National Symphony in Washington, DC, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, the Hamburg Symphony, the London Sinfonietta, the City of London Sinfonia, the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast, the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, the Virginia Philharmonic and the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt. Pittman has conducted for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company in New York as well as the Dutch Ballet Orchestra in Amsterdam for the Dutch National Ballet.

More recently, Pittman has guest-conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in Dublin. Other recent engagements include the Seattle Symphony, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, and several concert series as Assistant Conductor with the New York Philharmonic.

As an opera conductor Pittman has worked with the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, the Huntington Theater Company in Boston, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Kentucky Opera, the Tulsa Opera, Opera Omaha, the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia, the Serious Fun Festival at Lincoln Center and the Banff Arts Festival in Canada.

From 1968-84 Pittman was the Teacher of Orchestral Conducting and Orchestra Conductor at the New England Conservatory in Boston. From 1965-68 he was the Instructor of Conducting and Opera and the founder-director of the Eastman Musica Nova at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY.

Pittman received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Peabody Conservatory in 1996. He studied conducting with Laszlo Halasz in New York, Sergiu Celibidache in Italy, Pierre Boulez in Switzerland and Wilhelm Brueckner-Rueggeberg in Germany. He has made 28 recordings with Boston Musica Viva and the City of London Sinfonia for Nonesuch, Delos, Newport Classic, CRI, Neuma, Albany and Columbia Nippon.

Visit Richard Pittman’s Website