The New York Youth Symphony has announced the appointment of JOSHUA (JD) GERSEN as music director, effective with the orchestra’s 50th season, 2012-13. He will succeed RYAN McADAMS, now in his fifth and final season with the NYYS. Gersen is currently the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Conducting Fellow at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, where he will retain that title through the 2012-13 season. He made his conducting debut at age eleven with the Greater Bridgeport (Conn.) Youth Orchestra, and his first appearance with a professional orchestra five years later when he led the Greater Bridgeport Symphony in a performance of his own composition, “A Symphonic Movement.” A graduate of New England Conservatory and the Curtis Institute of Music, Gersen has studied conducting with Otto-Werner Mueller and Gustav Meier, and received further training through master classes with conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eschenbach, Alan Gilbert, and Simon Rattle. In the summer of 2009 he participated in a Conductors Guild Workshop at Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music led by Marin Alsop, the festival’s music director. He spent the past two summers as a fellow at Aspen Music Festival and School’s American Academy of Conducting.
Posted December 9, 2011
