Seiji Ozawa

Seiji Ozawa was one of the world's most celebrated orchestra conductors with a long career as musical director in major cities around the world including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Boston, where he was in charge of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for 29 years. Born in Mukden, Fengtian, Manchukuo (in Northeast China) on September 1, 1935, to Japanese parents who returned to their home country in 1944, he studied piano until a rugby injury forced him to study conducting. After capturing first prize in the International Competition of Orchestra Conductors in France, he was invited to study at what is now the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where he won the top honor as outstanding conductor, the Koussevitzky Prize, and a scholarship to study in Berlin, Germany with Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan. American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein named Seiji Ozawa as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for two seasons in the early 1960s. Also in that decade, Seiji Ozawa was musical director of the Toronto Symphony and principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and in the decade to follow he conducted the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. In 1973, he began his long association with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which ended in 2002. A stint with the Vienna State Opera followed until he stepped down in 2010 citing illness. The conductor devoted much of his life to teaching and in 2016, with writer Haruki Murakami, he published a book titled Absolutely On Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa (2016). His recording career spanned several decades and included albums such as Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition - Britten: A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1968), Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade - Borodin: Polovtsian Dances (1969), Russo: Street Music - Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra (1973), Berlioz: Roméo et Juliette (1976), Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (1980), Wilson: Sinfonia - Harbison: Symphony No. 1 (1985), Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - The Sleeping Beauty - Romeo & Juliet (1992), Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker - The Sleeping Beauty - Romeo & Juliet (1994), Music of the World: National Anthems (1998), and Seiji Ozawa Anniversary (2010). In 2019, he was honored with a 50 CD box set entitled Complete Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon. After several years of ill health, Seiji Ozawa died of heart failure on February 6, 2024, at the age of 88.