Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is music director emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) and conductor emeritus of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Mehta's father was the founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, and Mehta received his early musical education from him. When he was 18, he enrolled in the Vienna state music academy, from which he graduated after three years with a diploma as a conductor. He began winning international competitions and conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic at the age of 21. Beginning in the 1960s, Mehta gained experience by substituting for celebrated maestros throughout the world.

Mehta was music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra from 1961 to 1967 and of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962 to 1978, the youngest music director ever for any major North American orchestra. In 1969, he was appointed Music Adviser to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1981 he became its Music Director for Life. From 1978 to 1991, Mehta was music director of the New York Philharmonic. He was chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence from 1985 to 2017.

He is an honorary citizen of both Florence and Tel Aviv and was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera in 1997 and of the Bavarian State Opera in 2006. The title of Honorary Conductor was bestowed on him by numerous orchestras throughout the world. More recently, Mehta made several tours with the Bavarian State Opera and kept up a busy schedule of guest conducting appearances. In December 2006, he received the Kennedy Center Honor and in October 2008 he was honored by the Japanese Imperial Family with the Praemium Imperiale. In 2016, Mehta was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Teatro San Carlo, Naples.

Mehta was a member of the executive committee of the Writers and Artists for Peace in the Middle East, a pro-Israel group.

Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, during the British Raj, the older son of Mehli (1908–2002) and Tehmina (Daruvala) Mehta. His native language is Gujarati. His father was a self-taught violinist who founded and conducted the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and later the American Youth Symphony, which he conducted for 33 years after moving to Los Angeles. His father had previously lived in New York to study with violinist Ivan Galamian, a noted teacher who also taught Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman. His father returned to Bombay as an accomplished violinist of the Russian school. Mehta has said that on many occasions when he conducts in the U.S., someone approaches him to say, "You don't know how much I loved your father!"

Mehta has described his childhood as surrounded by music at home all the time, and has said he probably learned to speak Gujarati and sing around the same time. He says his father had a strong influence on him, and he listened to his quartet daily after his father returned from the US after the Second World War. Mehta was first taught to play violin and piano by his father. When he reached his early teens, his father allowed him to lead sectional rehearsals of the Bombay Symphony, and at sixteen, he was conducting the full orchestra during rehearsals.

Mehta graduated from St. Mary's School, Mumbai and went on to study medicine at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, at the urging of his mother, who wanted him to take up a profession more "respectable" than music. At age eighteen, he dropped out after two years to move to Vienna, one of Europe's music centers, in order to study music under Hans Swarowsky at the state music academy. He lived on $75 per month, and was a contemporary of conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim.