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Paul Gambill belongs to a new generation of conductors that are creating fresh ways to bring classical music alive for audiences of all ages. As founder and music director of the NCO, his inspiring conducting has attracted recordings for major record labels, national concert broadcasts on NPR's Performance Today, an ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, and feature length profiles in SYMPHONY and Eastman Notes magazines.
Gambill is known for presenting passionate and transparent performances of standard repertoire and new music which can be heard on his recordings for the Warner Brothers, Angel, Naxos, Albany, Alabaster and Compass labels. Under his leadership, the NCO has developed an “impressive command of diverse styles (SYMPHONY),” and is acknowledged as “an orchestra of maturity and virtuosity (Musicweb).” The New York Times praised his recent Albany Records release of the Thomson Cello Concerto with soloist Emanuel Feldman and the NCO as an “excellent new recording . . . the concerto sounds exhilarating in this bracing and confident performance.” And his 2003 recording with the NCO of Copland works for Naxos was called “practically perfect from every perspective” by ClassicsToday.
Paul Gambill’s inventive programs that present classical masterworks alongside jazz, folk and world music have established the NCO as one of the nation’s most creative and artistically diverse orchestras. His passionate commitment to featuring composers and their music as ambassadors for community-wide partnerships has further established the NCO's national profile as a leader in creating innovative programs that engage audiences from all walks of life. In a feature-length profile in Eastman Notes magazine, James Undercofler, President and CEO of the Philadelpia Orchestra, said, "[Gambill] chooses their repertoire and their commissions in a kind of educational partnership with their community. All this adds up to a new and vital model for American orchestras."
Gambill started his training as a French hornist, conductor and music educator at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam (BM Music Education 1980). He continued his horn and conducting studies at Indiana University with Philip Farkas and Thomas Baldner (MM 1986). Additional conducting studies have been with Charles Bruck (Pierre Monteux School, 1991), Gunther Schuller (Festival at Sandpoint, 1998) and most recently with Leonard Slatkin as one of nine “highly gifted, emerging conductors” chosen to participate in the inaugural season of the National Conducting Institute with the National Symphony Orchestra (2000).
Before turning his attention full-time to conducting, he performed French horn with the symphonies of Grant Park and Nashville, and the orchestra of the Santa Fe Opera. He currently lives in Nashville with his wife Joy, their sons, Nicholas and Benjamin, and their golden retriever, Gulliver.
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