Lawrence Golan, Music Director

The 2006-07 season marks the beginning of Lawrence Golan’s tenure as Music Director and Conductor of the Boulder Bach Festival. His vision with this organization is to move it toward becoming an international destination Bach festival of the highest artistic quality and authenticity. Upon accepting the position, Golan immediately laid out the plans for an epic 12-year Bach cycle that will include performances of the complete orchestral works, concerti, masses, passions, oratorios, motets, and major cantatas. This season, Maestro Golan also begins his tenure as Resident Conductor of the Phoenix Symphony. In that capacity, he will conduct on each of the symphony’s major series including Classics, Pops, Family, and Around Town. In addition, he continues to guest conduct professional orchestras, opera and ballet companies in the United States and around the world. Mr. Golan has conducted in over 20 U.S. states and 10 countries. Recent international performances include concerts with the Russian State Symphony Orchestra in Moscow, the Harrogate Symphony Orchestra in England, and a tour of Italy with the Orchestra Citta’ di Grosseto.

Golan is known for his inspired performances, imaginative programming, passion for developing new audiences, and engaging off-podium interactions. He is also recognized for his expertise in the complete spectrum of musical styles and periods, as exemplified by his position with the Boulder Bach Festival and his winning of the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music every year since 2003.

A staunch supporter of music education, Golan is Music Director and Conductor of the Phoenix Symphony Guild Youth Orchestra and Director of Orchestral Studies at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where he teaches graduate conducting majors and conducts the Lamont Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theatre.

A native of Chicago, Lawrence Golan holds degrees from the Indiana University School of Music (B.M. and M.M.) and the New England Conservatory of Music (D.M.A.). In addition, he studied at all of the major conducting festivals including Aspen and Tanglewood, where in 1999 he was awarded the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship. The long list of distinguished conductors with whom Mr. Golan has studied includes Robert Spano, Jorma Panula, David Zinman, Seiji Ozawa, Gustav Meier, Leonard Slatkin, Marin Alsop, Murry Sidlin, and Harold Farberman.

Mr. Golan’s most recent recordings are with the Czech Republic’s Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra and will be released on the Albany Records label in November of 2006. Funky Little Crustaceans features orchestral music by Colorado composer William Hill and Dreams of the Child of Light is a collection of works for Native American flute and orchestra with James Pellerite, former Principal Flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and now one of the world’s premiere Native American flutists. In addition, Mr. Golan has several commercially available recordings as a violinist.

Lawrence Golan’s edition and reduced orchestration of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is published by Spurwink River Publishing and is used by orchestras and ballet companies across North America, including the Portland Ballet Company, of which Golan is Music Director. His most recent publication is a scholarly-performing edition of the solo violin works of J. S. Bach that includes a handbook on Baroque Performance Practice and will be released by Mel Bay Publications in September, 2006.

Lawrence and his wife Cecilia, a hospitality industry executive from Buenos Aires, Argentina, have been married since 2003.