Gisèle Ben-Dor, Conductor Emerita
Gisèle Ben-Dor, Conductor Emerita of Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, served as its seconde Music Director from 1991 to 2000. In May 2007, she enthusiastically returned to the Pro Arte podium to conduct her friends and colleagues in a program that showcased music that has become her trademark. Over the years, Ms. Ben-Dor has recorded the music of Ginestera, Revueltas, and Villa-Lobos and has received overwhelming critical praise for her work.
In April 1999, BMG/Conifer issued the world premiere recording of the complete score of Alberto Ginastera's ballet Estancia, featuring Ms. Ben-Dor with the London Symphony. Of that disc, Classic CD stated that Ms. Ben-Dor "spectacularly proves her credentials." She has also recorded the music of Silvestre Revueltas for Koch, including the world premiere of Revueltas's final work, the ballet La Coronela, with the Santa Barbara Symphony and the English Chamber Orchestra, and the world premiere of Villa-Lobos's Symphony No.10, Amerindia, with the Santa Barbara Symphony and Chorus. Fanfare magazine calls Gisèle Ben-Dor "one of the best things that has ever happened to the music of the southern hemisphere."
Ms. Ben-Dor created the groundbreaking Revueltas Festival in January of 2000 and has been applauded for its imaginative approach and wide-ranging commitment to the cause of the composer. Also, in 2004, working with Georgina Ginastera, the composer's daughter, she created the exciting and extraordinarily popular Tango and Malambo Festival, a wide-ranging feast of concerts, dance, and film celebrating the urban and universally admired tango and its less familiar cousin, the malambo.
Gisèle Ben-Dor began her career when she had her first experience on the podium as a teenager in her native Uruguay. Later, when her family moved to Israel, she studied conducting in Tel Aviv and graduated from the Rubin Academy of Music. As the recipient of grants from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, she also graduated from Yale School of Music. Her work came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood Music Center; as a Conducting Fellow of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, she was named a Leonard Bernstein Fellow. She was subsequently invited by Bernstein to conduct the Bavarian Radio Orchestra in the first Schleswig-Holstein Festival. She made her professional conducting debut with the Israel Philharmonic in Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which was televised by the BBC/London.
A highlight of her tenure as resident conductor of the Houston Symphony was a Presidential Inauguration at The Kennedy Center. Her Carnegie Hall debut came during the Hall's 100th Anniversary celebration. She was further brought to the attention of the classical music world when she was chosen by Musical America as "Young Artist of the Year." The Boston Globe remarked, "Ben-Dor casts her spell ... a tremendous musician, and a vital, charismatic presence." She has shared the stage with such artists as Mstislav Rostroprovich, Ann-Sophie Mutter, Gil Shaham, Frederika von Stade, Hilary Hahn, Sara Chang, Leon Fleisher, Yefim Bronfmann, Sharon Isbin, and Arturo Sandoval.