The North Carolina Symphony previously welcomed Joshua Weilerstein as guest conductor in 2016. Those concerts feautured Horn Concerto No. 2 by Richard Strauss, performed by NCS Principal Horn Rebekah Daley. The program also included Dark Sand, Sifting Light, by Julia Adolphe; Epifania, by Pēteris Vasks; and Elgar's “Enigma” Variations.
In September 2021, Joshua Weilerstein marked the end of his six-year tenure as Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne with two concerts at the George Enescu Festival in Romania. Highlights of his 21/22 season include debuts with the Seattle Symphony, Kansas City Symphony, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Orchestre national de Lille, and Ireland’s RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, as well as return engagements with the Oslo Philharmonic, NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
In recent seasons, Weilerstein’s guest engagements have included concerts in Europe with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and in the United States the San Francisco Symphony and The Philadelphia Orchestra. During his time as Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, they released recordings by Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Smyth, and Ives, along with a complete Beethoven symphony cycle on DVD.
Born into a musical family, Weilerstein’s formative experience with classical music was as a violinist on tour to Panama and Guatemala with the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra of Boston, performing for thousands of young people who had never heard a live orchestra concert. While pursuing his master’s degree in violin and conducting at the New England Conservatory of Music, he won both the First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen in 2009. He was subsequently appointed as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic, where he served from 2012-2015.
In 2017, Weilerstein launched a classical music podcast called Sticky Notes, for music lovers and newcomers alike, which has had more than 2 million downloads in 165 countries. In the 2021/22 season he returns to Boston to serve as the Music Director of Phoenix, a dynamic and ambitious orchestra devoted to creating unforgettable experiences with classical music.
