appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Associated Press

Enid Tsui

Looking to take off into a new era after nearly two decades under the charismatic Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced on May 26 that it had hired Daniel Harding, a British conductor who is also an Air France pilot, as its next music director.
Harding, a 50-year-old who is known mostly for his work with European orchestras and is highly sought-after in Asia, agreed to a six-year contract starting with the 2027-28 season. His first appointment by an American orchestra is with the ensemble that engaged him for his US professional debut in 1997.
“It couldn’t have come a day sooner. I’m very glad it didn’t come a day later,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Paris. “The perfect timing, the right moment and here we go.”
Harding will conduct eight weeks in his first season, then expand his commitment to 12 weeks annually. He is also in his second season of a five-year contract as music director of Italy’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Kim Noltemy, who became the LA Phil’s president and CEO in 2024, reached an agreement with Harding during dinner in Rome, Italy.
“He’s an incredible musician and an inspiring leader, a devoted educator,” Noltemy said. “He has a global perspective. He’s committed to working with the students. So he has all of the different pieces, which we really hope to get in one person.”

His globetrotting career has included many years of regular visits to Asia, where his commitment to audiences and musicians is noteworthy.
Last September, he opened the 2025-26 season for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. In the winter, he led the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia on an Asia tour that included cities such as Hong Kong, Taichung, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul.
He has also been a mentor to a new generation of musicians since he began a five-year term in 2024 as music director of Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area (YMCG), an intensive music training camp and festival based in Guangzhou in mainland China.
Piloting and developing a reputation
Harding has been interested in aviation since he was young and started piloting in 2014. He joined Air France in 2021 and flies Airbus A320s in Europe and North Africa. He hopes to become a first officer on either a Boeing 777 or Airbus A350, widebody planes that fly transatlantic.
“It’s absolutely the most logical thing that, at some point in my first couple of years in my role in LA, I will also start coming to LA with my other uniform on,” he said.
Conductor Simon Rattle, an early mentor, said Harding is restless and “he needs something to do with the second brain”.
Deborah Borda, who headed the LA Phil from 1999 to 2017, said Harding’s second job gives him “a fascinating take on the world”.
“He talked about how he had to study, how much of it was technical, how much pleasure he got from concentrating on that rather than just on music,” she said.
Harding first conducted the LA Phil at the Ojai Music Festival in June 1997. He has also performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra.
He developed a reputation as a conductor who irked some US orchestras by talking too much.
“Because Daniel is an impatient and fast person by nature, that can be more difficult,” Rattle said. “He’s very self-aware, and he realised that a lot of the things that are not going right are because he wasn’t able to physically show them in the best way.”

Harding said his manner stemmed from a need to show his worth.
“I wanted the musicians to understand that I wasn’t there just to profit from their expertise, that I’d done my work, I’d prepared myself, I had an opinion,” he said. “And if I spoke too much, it wasn’t because I thought I knew better than them, it was because I wanted them to know that I was trying to earn my place being there.”
His big break, other appointments
A trumpet player as a child, Harding got his big break when he was 15. A teacher at Chetham’s School of Music sent a recording of him in a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire to Rattle, principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
“When he left school early and was a year too young to go to Cambridge, basically his parents gave him to us, so he kind of lived in and out of our house for that year,” Rattle said.
Harding became Rattle’s assistant in 1994, then was hired as Claudio Abbado’s assistant and debuted at the Berlin Philharmonic in 1996. He gained prominence when he led Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a Peter Brook production in 1998 at France’s Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Harding’s other prominent musical appointments include serving as music director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and principal conductor of Norway’s Trondheim Symphony, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris.
Dudamel transformed the LA Phil during a tenure that started in 2009 and ends this summer when he leaves to become music director of the New York Philharmonic. The LA Phil is adopting an unusual musical leadership model that includes Dudamel as artistic and cultural laureate with a mostly four-week annual commitment, creative director Esa-Pekka Salonen with a six-week commitment, and conductor-in-residence Anna Handler with a three-week commitment.
“It’s a long commute,” Harding said of his new job, “but I have a [particularly] easy-going relationship with aeroplanes, so that doesn’t bother me.”
Additional reporting by Enid Tsui


Metal meets Mongolian throat singing and instruments in Uuhai’s Hong Kong debut

Hong Kong Ballet to move to city’s first dedicated dance venue in 2027

The inspiring story of Hong Kong dancer and filmmaker who began at 48 after leaving Apple

Protesters surround Kennedy Centre over Trump demolition fears

World of performing arts

Meet Daniel Harding, new LA Phil music director with deep Asia ties

Daniel Harding coaches musicians from YMCG (Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area), an intensive music training camp and festival based in Guangzhou, China, during a rehearsal. Harding has been appointed the next music director for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Photo: Youth Music Culture the Greater Bay Area

Conductor Daniel Harding (centre) raises his hand with pianist Paul Lewis after a performance with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in 2025. Photo: Keith Hiro/HK Phil

Harding conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2025. Photo: Los Angeles Philharmonic via AP

‘I am hungry’: Elim Chan on taking the lead at the San Francisco Symphony

Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan will start as the San Francisco Symphony’s music director in 2027. She is the first woman appointed to the role in the orchestra’s 115-year history. Photo: Cody Pickens

Chan in Hong Kong in 2024. She says she has been impressed with the SFS sound during her initial meetings with the orchestra. Photo: Antony Dickson

How Daniel Harding-led Chinese youth music camp lets rising stars learn from the best

Daniel Harding provides guidance to YMCG musicians during a rehearsal. Photo: Youth Music Culture the Greater Bay Area

Spanish clarinettist Miguel Peñarroja Canós (second from right) rehearses with fellow musicians taking part in the Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area training camp and festival in preparation for the 2025 YMCG concerts in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Photo: Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area

Daniel Harding provides guidance to YMCG musicians during a rehearsal. Photo: YMCG

Harding believes that youth orchestras not only create musicians of the future, but also audiences of the future. Photo: YMCG

Hong Kong cellist Calvin Wong (second left) was the cello principal for this year’s YMCG Orchestra. Photo: YMCG

Peñarroja (right) received the Steven Ying Music Fellowship Award, which helps cover YMCG participants’ flight and high-speed rail tickets to and from Guangzhou. Photo: YMCG

YMCG musicians and faculty members perform at the Xinghai Concert Hall in Guangzhou, China on January 16, 2025. Photo: YMCG

Chinese violinist Zhang Jiyun (left) rehearses for this year’s YMCG concerts. Photo: YMCG

How sitarist Anoushka Shankar broke her creative block after the pandemic

Anoushka Shankar will perform in Hong Kong on June 3. She is bringing her Chapters tour to the city for a premiere alongside the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong and guest conductor Robert Ames. Photo: Laura Lewis

As a diasporic “third-culture” individual, Anoushka’s philosophy on cross-cultural collaboration has evolved from her father’s legacy. Photo: Laura Lewis

Shankar is eager to explore Hong Kong – especially the food. Photo: Jag Gundu

HK Phil’s compressed Ring cycle recording with Tarmo Peltokoski is Wagner made accessible

Tarmo Peltokoski conducts the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. The orchestra’s Deutsche Grammophon recording of Henk de Vlieger’s Wagner: The Ring – An Orchestral Adventure compresses Wagner’s Ring cycle from 16 hours to just over an hour. Photo: courtesy of Universal Music Group

The digital album of Richard Wagner’s The Ring – An Orchestral Adventure, arranged by Henk de Vlieger. 

Lifestyle

Arts

Culture

Music

Gustavo Dudamel’s successor, who is an Air France pilot and mentor to young musicians, has agreed to a six-year contract with the LA Phil


Gustavo Dudamel’s successor, who is an Air France pilot and mentor to young musicians, has agreed to a six-year contract with the LA Phil.


Classical music

Meet Daniel Harding, new LA Phil music director with deep Asia ties

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Gustavo Dudamel’s successor, who is an Air France pilot and mentor to young musicians, has agreed to a six-year contract with the LA Phil

Gustavo Dudamel’s successor, who is an Air France pilot and mentor to young musicians, has agreed to a six-year contract with the LA Phil