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President and Executive Director Zarin Mehta
Zarin Mehta, one of the world’s leading arts administrators, was appointed Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic in September 2000, and received the additional title of President in June 2004 in recognition of his outstanding leadership of the Orchestra. Through his deep ties to the global arts community, he has made the New York Philharmonic a magnet for the world’s great artists, and has brought both rising and seasoned performers to the Orchestra’s stage. Under his leadership the Philharmonic has hired two of its Music Directors: Lorin Maazel, in the 2002–03 season, and Alan Gilbert, who took over the reins in September 2009.
Mr. Mehta has continually sought to enrich and broaden the musical experience of Philharmonic audiences by fostering an active commissioning program, and instituting innovative series of lectures and discussions. He has overseen major international Orchestra tours in Asia and throughout Europe, helping to make the Philharmonic a worldwide cultural ambassador. An event that highlighted this role was the historic February 2008 concert in Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Also under Mr. Mehta’s aegis, the Philharmonic welcomed its first-ever Global Sponsor, Credit Suisse.
At home, Mr. Mehta has maintained the Philharmonic’s preeminent position in New York City’s cultural life through the free Annual Memorial Day Concerts at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and the beloved summer series now known as the New York Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, Presented by Didi and Oscar Schafer. He has made outreach to young people a priority, continuing the famed Young People’s Concerts, expanding the Orchestra’s extensive educational activities, introducing the Very Young People’s Concerts, for children ages 3 to 6.
Mr. Mehta continues to lead the Orchestra’s adoption of new technologies to enhance the concert experience. He oversaw a pioneering agreement between the Orchestra and Deutsche Grammophon to offer Philharmonic concerts, recorded live, to be released on the DG Concerts label, exclusively on iTunes. The Orchestra launched The New York Philharmonic This Week — the only weekly, national radio broadcast by an American orchestra — which began in the 2004–05 season as a 39-week series and has since expanded to 52 weeks per year.
Prior to his appointment with the New York Philharmonic, Mr. Mehta was president and chief executive officer of the Ravinia Festival (1990–2000), a multi-disciplinary summer music festival where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has performed annually since 1936. Under Mr. Mehta’s leadership, Ravinia launched several innovative programs, including a far-reaching world music series, a jazz festival-within-the-festival, and an educational outreach series that helped to bring music into schools that could no longer afford to make arts intrinsic to the curriculum.
Mr. Mehta was born in Bombay in 1938. He is the son of the late violinist and Bombay Symphony Orchestra founder Mehli Mehta — who is largely credited with introducing western classical music to India. He is also the brother of the celebrated conductor Zubin Mehta, who was the New York Philharmonic’s Music Director from 1978 to 1991. Zarin Mehta left India as a teenager to study accounting in England, and in 1962, after qualifying as a chartered accountant, he moved to Canada to join the international accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. While a partner with the firm, he joined the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors and, in 1981, was appointed managing director. He remained for nine years, and for his contributions to the orchestra and Montreal’s cultural life, the Canadian government named him a Member of the Order of Canada.
Through the years he has garnered numerous other honors, including honorary doctorates from Chicago’s Roosevelt University and from the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. On December 9, 2007, he received the Theodore L. Kesselman Award for Arts Education by the New York Youth Symphony.
Mr. Mehta is treasurer of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and is on the board of directors of WNYC Radio. He is married to Carmen Lasky, with whom he has two children, daughter Rohanna, and son Rustom.
