Piero Gamba

Piero Gamba, born in Rome in 1936, is an Italian orchestral conductor and pianist. He was first recognised as a child and labeled a child prodigy. Today, Gamba has been conducting for 60 years with 125 different orchestras in 300 cities.

The conductor has been appointed honorary director for life of nine different symphony orchestras worldwide and his name appears in a number of major music encyclopedias.

He has held conducting positions at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Uruguay and was the Conductor as well as the Music Director of The Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is especially respected by soloists and they look forward to performing with him. Yehudi Menuhin said “I was never better accompanied. A sheer joy. It was as if I were playing with someone who knew my most secret inclination... There was no burden, no weight on me. I played as freely as I might alone. Incredible!”

In 1964, Piero Gamba accomplished his dream: “to create a greater spiritual fusion of men through the arts”. Along with such international musicians as Pablo Casals, Victor de Sabata, Philip Newman, Albert Scweitzer, Andre Segovia and Igor Stravinsky he established Sumphonicum Europae. This organisation received the high patronage of Her Majesty, the late Queen Elisabeth of Belgium.

Two years earlier, in 1962, Gamba won the Arnold Bax Memorial Medal. In 1983, he began his position as chief conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and spent three years with the orchestra, as well as conducting many other Australian Orchestras. Shortly after leaving the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Gamba became the musical director and conductor of the SODRE National Symphonic Orchestra of Uruguay and spent a year in this position. In 2001, he returned to Uruguay to conduct this orchestra for another four years.

Piero Gamba has made numerous recordings with several different orchestras and labels as a conductor, a violinist and a composer. He currently lives in New York City and teaches orchestra conducting