Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic since its formation twenty years ago. Mr. Zander, who was born and educated in England, began to compose at the age of nine. He studied with England's leading composer, Benjamin Britten, and his close associate Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst. At fifteen, Zander was invited to Florence to study with the great Spanish cello virtuoso Gaspar Cassado.  For the next five years he traveled throughout Europe performing as a chamber musician. After earning a degree at University College in London he did graduate work at Harvard and in New York on a Harkness Fellowship.
  
Since 1966 Mr. Zander has been on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he teaches graduate courses in interpretation and chamber music, conducts the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, and regularly conducts the Conservatory's Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Zander is also the Artistic Director of the music program at Walnut Hill, a boarding school for the training of highly accomplished young performing artists.
  
In his twenty-eight years as conductor of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, he has led the orchestra on eleven international tours, including a tour to Cuba and Mexico in 1999, Brazil in 1997 and to Argentina and Chile in 1995. A two-hour documentary of their 1995 tour, entitled "A New World of Music", has won several prizes in prestigious film festivals, and was recently nominated for an Emmy Award. A recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 5, performed by the Youth Philharmonic on its tour of Brazil, was released last year. Just released is a double-CD of the YPO's historic tour to Mexico and Cuba in June 1999.
  
As a guest conductor, Mr. Zander has appeared with orchestras throughout the United Sates and in Russia, Germany, Korea, Israel, Northern Ireland, Italy and Japan. In recent years, Mr. Zander has formed a close association with the Philharmonic, in London with whom he is a regular guest conductor. His recording with them of Mahler's Ninth Symphony was released by Telarc to great critical acclaim and was nominated for a Grammy earlier this year. He is currently working on recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies with the Philharmonic, also for Telarc. The first CD of this cycle, featuring Beethoven's Symphonies No. 5 and 7 has just been released.
  
Benjamin Zander's critically acclaimed Carlton Classics recordings with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra include Rite of Spring, which Classic CD Magazine voted as amongst the five best available CDs of the work. It was also chosen by the New York Times as one of the ten outstanding musical events of 1992, and, together with his recording with the BPO of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, received special recommendations in the 1994 Penguin Classic CD Guide. A conductor who has devoted much of his life to Mahler, Zander's recording of Mahler's Sixth Symphony with the BPO was named by Fanfare Magazine as "one of the best recordings of the piece ever made." In October 1998, Carlton Classics re-issued these CDs together with a new recording of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony and Cello Concerto No. 1, and Ravel's Piano Concerto coupled with Petrushka by Stravinsky.
  
Using music as both metaphor and medium, Benjamin Zander has become a much sought-after speaker to major organizations all over the world, bringing his insights as the conductor of a symphony orchestra to leaders involved in transformation and change. A book, The Art of Possibility, written with noted psychotherapist Rosamund Zander, includes many of these themes and insights, and has just been published by Harvard Business School Press. Mr. Zander has appeared as a keynote speaker for the Fortune 500 companies, the State of the World Forums, an Education Conference in London with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and numerous corporations including Shell, IBM, Arthur Andersen, KPMG, Sprint, NASA and the US Army. At the 1999 World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was a keynote speaker, Mr. Zander was presented with the Crystal Award in recognition of his contribution, through culture and the arts, to global understanding and peace. Mr. Zander is the subject of a full length BBC documentary which has been aired world-wide, and he was featured on CBS's "60 Minutes" earlier this year. 

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