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Paul Gambill creates fresh ways to bring classical music alive for audiences of all ages. He is known for presenting exciting performances and programming that creatively integrates standard repertoire and new music. Since 2003, Gambill has been music director of the Nashville Ballet, which performs with the Nashville Symphony, and has served as music director of Orchestra Nashville for the past 19 years.
In 1990, Gambill founded Orchestra Nashville (formerly known as the Nashville Chamber Orchestra), enlisting the talents of Nashville's top freelance-studio musicians. His passionate commitment to engage audiences and foster community-wide partnerships established a national profile for Orchestra Nashville as a leader in creating innovative programs.
Gambill has commissioned 45 works from American composers that cross all musical boundaries. He has designed and collaborated on four multi-year composer residencies, including a three-year Music Alive Meet the Composer residency with David Balakrishnan from Turtle Island Quartet. His innovative programs featured a wide range of artists including Marietta Simpson, Sharon Isbin, Turtle Island Quartet, NEXUS percussion ensemble, Trey Anastasio, Gilles Apap, Raul Jaurena, Martina McBride, Alison Krauss and John Jorgenson.
Paul Gambill's recordings for the Warner Bros., Naxos, Angel, Albany, Alabaster and Compass labels have been nominated for a Grammy Award and have won three national awards for children's media including the prestigious Parents' Choice Foundation Gold Award. The New York Times praised his recent release of the Thomson Cello Concerto with soloist Emmanuel Feldman and Orchestra Nashville as an "excellent new recording." ClassicsToday called his 2003 Naxos recording of Copland works with Orchestra Nashville "practically perfect from every perspective."
National awards for Gambill's creative programming and community outreach projects have come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Institute for American Music at the Eastman School of Music, ASCAP, Meet The Composer and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's New Strategies Lab. James Undercofler, former President of the Eastman School of Music, praised Gambill's programming initiatives in a feature length profile in Eastman Notes magazine, saying "[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 is the co-founder of the String Crossings Honors Orchestra for high school string students, which he developed as a partnership between Orchestra Nashville and Belmont University. He has also served as conductor of the String Crossings Summer Camp Orchestra for high school students at Belmont since 2006.
Gambill started his training as a music educator, French hornist and conductor at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam. He taught public school instrumental music for grades 4-12 in his home state of Minnesota before pursuing graduate study in conducting at Indiana University. Additional conducting studies have been at the Pierre Monteux School with Charles Bruck, and most recently with Leonard Slatkin as one of nine "highly gifted, emerging conductors" chosen to participate in the National Conducting Institute with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Recent and upcoming season highlights include engagements with the symphonies of Syracuse, Fairfax, Huntsville and Quad City, new productions of Carmina Burana and Mendelssohn's complete Midsummer Night's Dream with the Nashville Ballet and Nashville Symphony, a performance with Orchestra Nashville at the National Conference of the League of American Orchestras, and performing before 80,000 fans at the Bonnaroo Music Festival with Orchestra Nashville and Trey Anastasio.
Before turning his attention full-time to conducting, Gambill performed French horn with the Santa Fe Opera, Grant Park Festival Orchestra and the Nashville Symphony. He currently lives in Montpelier with his wife Joy, their two boys, and Sebastian, their golden retriever.
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