CONDUCTOR

Gavriel Heine is one of the most exciting and multifaceted conducting talents of his generation, working in opera, ballet and symphonic repertoire. In 2022 he resigned from his position of resident conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia after 15 seasons with the world-renowned company.  He is both Artistic Director and Music Director of Northern Lights Festival Opera in Minnesota, USA. He previously served as Chief Conductor of the Kharkiv Youth Symphony Orchestra (Ukraine’s only orchestra for emerging professional musicians) from 2003 to 2007.

 

Born and raised in the USA, Heine is the first ever American citizen to have graduated from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where he studied the cello (BM, MM).  He studied operatic/symphonic conducting with the legendary professor Ilya Musin and Leonid Korchmar at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory (Artist Diploma), and holds an MM in conducting from the Indiana University School of Music (Bloomington) where he studied with Imre Palló, Thomas Baldner and David Effron.

 

Following his 2007 debut at the Mariinsky Theater, by invitation of Valery Gergiev (with whom Heine studied in a televised master class with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra), he was appointed resident conductor of the Mariinsky, where he conducted over 1,000 performances in his 15 years with the company.

 

Heine was a co-author of the Mariinsky’s first subscription series for young people - the very popular Academy of Young Theatre-Goers - where he created and conducted special versions of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Love for Three Oranges and Wagner’s Ring for younger audiences. He served as Artistic Coordinator/Assistant Conductor of the Mariinsky’s New Horizons Festival of Contemporary Music, conducting works by Pierre Boulez, Henri Dutilleux, György Kurtág, Rodion Shchedrin, Vladimir Tarnopolsky and Boris Tishchenko.  He conducted notable premieres at the Mariinsky Theatre including Robert Carsen's staging of My Fair Lady (co-production with the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), Delibes/Ashton’s Sylvia, Anton Pimonov’s Bambi/In the Jungle and the Russian premiere of Twyla Tharp’s Push Comes to Shove at the XVIII Mariinsky International Ballet Festival.  

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Heine and Valery Gergiev share conducting credits on the soundtrack recording of Marco Beltrami's score to the film Matilda (2017) with the Mariinsky Orchestra – a story about the relationship between the young future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and the legendary ballerina of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, Mathilde Kschessinska.

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Gavriel Heine’s repertoire encompasses a wide range of symphonic, ballet and operatic repertoire.  Both on tour with the Mariinsky Orchestra & Ballet and as a guest conductor, he has performed across the world in some of the most prestigious opera houses, festivals and concert venues, including: London’s Royal Opera House Covent Garden; the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in Germany; Teatro Regio Torino in Italy, LAC in Lugano, Switzerland, the Gergiev Festival in Mikkeli, Finland, the Moscow Conservatory Great Hall and Bolshoi Theater, Saint Petersburg’s Mikhailovsky Theater, Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan, the Tianjin Grand Theater in China; the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C.,  the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa, Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California, the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Boston Opera House with Boston Ballet and Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

 

Amongst the leading international orchestras which he has conducted are the Sinfonieorchester Basel and Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana in Switzerland; La Verdi Orchestra of Milan, the orchestras of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and the Teatro Regio di Torino in Italy; the Royal Opera House Orchestra Covent Garden, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra in Croatia; the Athens State Orchestra; the Pacific Symphony at Festival Napa Valley, The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia "Evgeny Svetlanov", Moscow’s Symphony Orchestra of New Russia, the Saint Petersburg State Cappella Symphony Orchestra, the Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra and the Samara Philharmonic Orchestra in Russia; the Jönköping Sinfonietta in Sweden and the Mikkeli Chamber Orchestra in Finland. He has also led rehearsals with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in The Netherlands as assistant conductor to Valery Gergiev. 

 

At the Northern Lights Music Festival, Heine has conducted new productions of Gianni Schicchi, Pagliacci, La bohème, Carmen, The Merry Widow, Madama Butterfly, Eugene Onegin, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Tosca, The Medium, La Cenerentola, Die Zauberflöte, Candide and Le nozze di Figaro. The critically acclaimed July 2020 socially-distanced outdoor production of Tosca at the Northern Lights Music Festival in July 2020 was the first live US performance of an opera after the COVID-19 shutdown and led the way forward in the world of music after months of silence in theaters across the country.

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Guest conducting credits include Don Quichotte at Opéra de Paris (Bastille), Swan Lake with the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London, Don Quichotte at Teatro alla Scala, The Nutcracker at New York City Ballet, Balanchine's Jewels at Norwegian National Ballet, The Firebird/Boléro with Béjart Ballet and the Orchestra Teatro Regio in Torino, Eugene Onegin and Candide at Opéra de Lausanne, Otello at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, Die Zauberflöte at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote and La Sylphide at San Francisco Ballet, Romeo and Juliet at Boston Ballet, The Nutcracker and Cinderella at Los Angeles Ballet, Swan Lake and La Sylphide with La Compañía Nacional de Danza in Mexico City,  Alexei Ratmansky's Giselle with United Ukrainian Ballet and the Pacific Symphony, Romeo and Juliet and a Balanchine Gala with the State Ballet of Georgia in Tbilisi, on tour to the Dubai Opera House, and on tour in the US.

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Performances this season include Swan Lake and a Balanchine Gala with La Compañía Nacional de Danza in Mexico City, The Nutcracker and Coppelia with Los Angeles Ballet, Serait-ce la Mort?, The Firebird and Boléro with Béjart Ballet at Teatro La Fenice, and a debut with Philadelphia Ballet (Don Quixote).

 

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