Gavriel Heine, Guest Artist
Gavriel Heine is currently a resident conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia and Music Director of Northern Lights Music Festival in Minnesota, USA.
Born in the United States and educated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, he was one of Ilya Musin's last pupils at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and follows a long line of conductors who were deeply influenced by the legendary professor. In 2007, Valery Gergiev invited Heine to make his debut at the Mariinsky Theatre, resulting in his appointment to the conducting roster. He is equally at home in symphonic, operatic and ballet repertoire, and has since led over 600 performances at the Mariinsky, where his repertoire includes over 40 operas and ballets.
Heine regularly conducts on international tours with the Mariinsky company, and has led performances in London (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), Baden-Baden (Festspielhaus), Torino (Teatro Regio), Lugano (LAC), Washington, DC (Kennedy Center), Los Angeles (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion), Costa Mesa (Segerstrom Center), Berkeley (Zellerbach Hall), New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and most recently in Tokyo (Bunka Kaikan) and Tianjin (Tianjin Grand Theatre). Heine conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra at the Gergiev Festival in Mikkeli, Finland and made his Bolshoi Theatre debut in Moscow conducting the Mariinsky Opera in Bartok's Bluebeard’s Castle.
As a guest conductor, Heine has appeared in with the Sinfonieorchester Basel, La Verdi Orchestra of Milan, Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino, The Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, The Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Athens State Orchestra, the Radio Orpheus Orchestra (Moscow), Symphony Orchestra of New Russia (Moscow), the St. Petersburg State Cappella Symphony Orchestra, Tatarstan National Symphony Orchestra (Kazan, Russia) among others - and has led rehearsals with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted the premiere performances of the Pet Halmen production of Die Zauberflöte at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (co-production with Lausanne Opera). In March 2018 he made his conducting debut at Boston Ballet with John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet.
From 2003-2007 he served as Principal Guest Conductor/Acting Music Director of the Kharkov Symphony Orchestra (Ukraine). Since 2011 Heine has held the position of Music Director of the annual Northern Lights Music Festival (Minnesota), where he conducts symphonic programs and has led new productions of Gianni Schicchi, Pagliacci, La bohème, Carmen, The Merry Widow, Madama Butterfly, Eugene Onegin and Il barbiere di Siviglia. He will lead a new production of La Traviata at the Northern Lights Music Festival in July 2019.
Gavriel Heine is the first ever American citizen to graduate from the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. He did his post-graduate studies in conducting with Ilya Musin and Leonid Korchmar at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and holds a master's degree in conducting from Indiana University, Bloomington, where he studied with Imre Palló, Thomas Baldner and David Effron. He was featured in a televised masterclass with Valery Gergiev and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at De Doelen in Rotterdam, and was chosen for the League of American Orchestras’ Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra.
