Chief Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Christian Reif has established a reputation for his natural musicality, innovative programming and technical command.
Since 2022, Reif has served as Music Director of the Lakes Area Music Festival, a month-long summer festival in Minnesota featuring the nation’s top classical performers in programming that ranges from opera and chamber music to symphonic performances, along with commissioned new works. LAMF believes that high quality arts experiences should be accessible to all and operates on a name-your-price ticket model.
Highlights of Reif’s 2024–25 season include debut performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, Phoenix Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, SWR Symphony Orchestra and Royal Northern Sinfonia. He leads the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Fantastica, a newly commissioned work by composer Jimmy López Bellido with input by Reif based on The Neverending Story, originally a fantasy novel by the German writer Michael Ende and later a major motion picture. He conducts his own arrangement of John Adams’ El Niño with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Gävle Symphony and the American Modern Opera Company in December 2024. Reif and his wife, soprano Julia Bullock, also bring Bullock's original program “History's Persistent Voice” to performances at Lincoln Center and Yale University’s Schwarzman Center in February 2025.
With an equal footing in North America and Europe, Reif has conducted the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Kansas City, as well as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Previous season highlights include appearances with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble. In Europe, he has performed repeatedly with Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Hallé Orchestra and Stavanger Symphony.
Reif enjoys conducting opera and has led productions at Juilliard Opera of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Opera San Jose of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and the Lakes Area Music Festival of Ariadne auf Naxos and The Rake’s Progress.
In 2024, Reif won a Grammy for the Nonesuch Records album Walking in the Dark, the debut solo album of classical singer Julia Bullock in which he accompanied her on piano and led London's Philharmonia Orchestra. The album was praised by Gramophone magazine as “illuminating” and described Reif as providing “excellent support” for Bullock. In 2020 during the pandemic, Reif and Bullock recorded a series of at-home virtual “Songs of Comfort,” ranging from Carole King’s classic “Up on the Roof” to Schubert’s Wandrers Nachtlied. NPR Music featured the duo in a Tiny Desk Concert for their special quarantine edition of the series, and The New York Times highlighted them on their “Best Classical Music of 2020” list.
From 2016 to 2019, Christian was resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and music director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, after being the conducting fellow at the New World Symphony from 2014 to 2016 and at Tanglewood Music Center in 2015 and 2016. He studied conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at The Juilliard School in New York City. He resides in Munich with his wife, Julia Bullock, and their son.
Photo credit: Simon Pauly