Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Emmy award-winning and Grammy-nominated conductor, is celebrating 35 years of professional conducting, and with a deep commitment to passing his experience on to the next generation of musicians, he has been appointed Distinguished Resident Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, a position that will start in the 2025-2026 school year. Currently, he is on faculty at Baylor University, where he is the Mary Franks Thompson Director of Orchestral Studies through the 2024-2025 school year.
He has also established The Conducting Institute to teach orchestral conducting to students ages high school and up, of all levels, through various programs, workshops, courses, and seminars across the year.
Harth-Bedoya has amassed considerable experience at the helm of orchestras, including tenures as Chief Conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and as Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, where he now holds the title of Music Director Laureate. Previously he has held Music Director positions with the Auckland Philharmonia in New Zealand, the Eugene Symphony in Oregon, the Lima Philharmonic Orchestra in Peru, and the New York Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall.
Harth-Bedoya guest conducts orchestras worldwide. Recent engagements include the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Curtis Orchestra, Colburn Orchestra, National Symphony of Taiwan, Helsinki Philharmonic, National Orchestra of Spain, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and Sydney Symphony, among others.
He is a frequent guest at summer festivals such as Aspen Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Boston University Tanglewood Institute, Grant Park Festival, Hollywood Bowl, and the New Zealand Festival.
Equally, at home in opera, Harth-Bedoya led productions at English National Opera, Bremen Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Cincinnati Opera, Minnesota Opera, and Santa Fe Opera. In the fall of 2024, he will make his Metropolitan Opera debut.
With a passionate devotion to unearthing new South American repertoire, Miguel Harth-Bedoya is the founder and Artistic Director of Caminos del Inka, a non-profit organization dedicated to researching, performing, and preserving the rich musical legacy of the Americas. Among its varied activities, Caminos del Inka champions composers from across the Americas, produces lectures, chamber music concerts, audio and video recordings, and documentaries. In addition, Harth-Bedoya’s multimedia project: Caminos del Inka, a musical journey has been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Seattle Symphony, among others. He continues his research of orchestral music from Latin America and the Caribbean through Latin Orchestral Music, A Comprehensive Online Catalog (www.latinorchestralmusic.com).
Harth-Bedoya’s impressive discography includes albums on Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Gramophone, Decca, and Naxos, among others, including Traditions and Transformations: Sounds of Silk Road Chicago with the Chicago Symphony and Yo-Yo Ma, which received two Grammy nominations.
Born and raised in Peru, Harth-Bedoya studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and the The Juilliard School, both under the guidance of Otto-Werner Mueller. He also studied with Seiji Ozawa at Tanglewood and was awarded an Honorary Doctor in Music degree from Texas Christian University.
For more information visit www.miguelharth-bedoya.com
