Grant Llewellyn served as North Carolina Symphony’s Music Director for sixteen seasons and now holds the post of Music Director Laureate. Highlights from last season include a gala with Renée Fleming on the 90th anniversary of the Symphony’s very first concert and performances of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 featuring the N.C. Master Chorale.
Grant Llewellyn is renowned for his exceptional charisma, energy, and easy authority in music of all styles and periods. This season is his eighth as Music Director of the Orchestre National de Bretagne. Guest engagements have included the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra, among others. Llewellyn enjoys a continuing relationship with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales whom he led on tour to Patagonia and South America as well as joining their 90th anniversary celebrations and conducting their Proms in the Park in September 2018.
Llewellyn has conducted widely across North America, most notably the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Boston, Houston, Milwaukee, Montreal, St. Louis, and Toronto, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Orchestra of St Luke’s at Caramoor Festival. During his time as Music Director of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s leading period orchestra, he gained a reputation as a formidable interpreter of music of the baroque and classical periods. An accomplished opera conductor, he has appeared at the opera companies of English National Opera, Opera North, and the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Productions include the United States premiere of Handel’s Richard the Lionheart with the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis and Fidelio with the Opéra de Rennes, where last season he led Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.
Notable recordings with the North Carolina Symphony include American Spectrum, featuring 20th century works with the saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and Britten’s Cello Symphony and Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante with the cellist Zuill Bailey; with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Llewellyn recently recorded a disc of Lowell Liebermann’s orchestral works.
Deeply committed and passionate about engaging young people with music, Llewellyn regularly leads education and outreach projects; in 2017 he led the first ever “relaxed” BBC Prom with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, a concert specially designed for those with autism, sensory and communication impairments, and learning disabilities.
Born in Tenby, South Wales, Llewellyn won a Conducting Fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in 1985, where he worked with Bernstein, Ozawa, Masur, and Previn.
