Miguel Harth-Bedoya

Miguel Alberto Harth-Bedoya (born 1968, Lima, Peru) is a Peruvian conductor.

Family and early life

His mother was a choral director for the airline Aeroperu. His sister Maria Luisa Harth-Bedoya is a guitarist.

Harth-Bedoya studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He later attended the Juilliard School in New York, where his teachers included Otto-Werner Mueller. He graduated from Juilliard in 1991 with a Bachelor of Music degree and in 1993 with a Master of Music degree, both in conducting. His other conducting teachers have included Gustav Meier and Seiji Ozawa. In his native Peru, Harth-Bedoya helped to establish the Orquesta Filarmonica de Lima and the Compañía Contemporánea de Opera, and worked with both ensembles from 1993 to 1998.

Career

In the USA in his early career, Harth-Bedoya worked with the Norwalk Youth Symphony (Connecticut), with which he made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut. He was music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1993 to 1997. He also worked as a member of the Juilliard conducting faculty and was a staff conductor with the New York Philharmonic.

In 1996, Harth-Bedoya became music director of the Eugene Symphony, and held this post until 2002. In 1998, he became assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, appointed by then-music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. Salonen subsequently promoted him to associate conductor in 1999, and Harth-Bedoya held this post through 2004. In 2002, Harth-Bedoya won the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award.

In 2000, Harth-Bedoya became Music Director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. His Fort Worth contract, most recently extended through the 2010-2011 season, has since been further extended through 2014.

Having conducted the premiere of the revised version of Golijov's Ainadamar, which was given its premiere at The Santa Fe Opera on July 30, 2005. Harth-Bedoya conducted the world premiere performances of Jennifer Higdon's first opera Cold Mountain, staged by the Santa Fe company in August 2015. The libretto, written by Gene Scheer, is based on the 1997 award-winning novel of the same name by Charles Frazier.

Outside of the USA, Harth-Bedoya was music director of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra from 2000 to 2005. In 2007, he established the multimedia Caminos del Inka project for promotion of music from South America, which has included orchestral works of several South American composers, such as Osvaldo Golijov, Enrique Iturriaga, Celso Garrido Lecca, Esteban Benzecry and Jimmy Lopez. Harth-Bedoya first guest-conducted the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (KORK) in 2010. In February 2012, the KORK announced the appointment of Harth-Bedoya as its 7th principal conductor, effective with the 2013-2014 season.

Harth-Bedoya holds a position as Distinguished Guest Professor of Conducting at Texas Christian University.

He married his wife Maritza in 2000. The couple have 3 children. The family resides in Fort Worth, Texas.