ANKUSH KUMAR BAHL
Orchestra Conductor

Music Director, New Jersey Youth Symphony; Kinhaven Music School; Artistic Director, International Goppisberger Music Festival

Described as an "energetic" conductor who leads with "clear authority and enthusiasm" by the New York Times after his Carnegie Hall debut, Ankush Kumar Bahl is currently the Music Director of the New Jersey Youth Symphony.

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bahl received a double degree in Music and Rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and completed his Master's Degree in conducting at the Manhattan School of Music with teachers Zdenek Macal, George Manahan and David Gilbert.

Prior to MSM, Mr. Bahl's principal conducting teachers were Kenneth Kiesler, Alasdair Neale, and David Milnes. He is also fortunate to have participated in master classes and workshops with Sir Colin Davis, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eschenbach, Kurt Masur, David Zinman, David Robertson, James Conlon, Sergiu Comissiona, Gunther Schuller, Gustav Meier, Larry Rachleff, Jorma Panula, Michael Stern, Murry Sidlin, Colin Metters, and David Effron.

Mr. Bahl lives in New York City where he regularly works with the conservatories, regional orchestras and professional orchestras in the area. Recent seasons have also included repeat guest conducting stints with the Ridgefield Symphony, the Chelsea Symphony, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra as well as his debuts with the Portland Symphony (Maine) and Indianapolis Symphony.

In the summer of 2006, Bahl was one of three Americans invited out of over 500 applications to compete in the Solti International Conducting Competition and this past fall he was invited by incoming Music Director, Alan Gilbert, to conduct the New York Philharmonic as part of their periodic “young conductor readings.” This past spring, Mr. Bahl conducted in concert at a workshop with Kurt Masur where he once again caught the attention of The New York Times who wrote “By Saturday the orchestra had become as fine a Mendelssohn vehicle as any young conductor could want, and most handled it capably, though without carrying it to great heights of inspiration. One who did seem to inspire it was Ankush Kumar Bahl, in the finale of the “Reformation” Symphony. Mr. Bahl was also one of the few who, in the earlier sessions, took the lead in rehearsing the orchestra in detail rather than simply waiting for Mr. Masur to interrupt and take matters into his own hands… the “Reformation” Symphony was a great success.”

Mr. Bahl currently spends his summers in Vermont as a guest conductor of the Kinhaven Music School and in Switzerland as the Artistic Director of the International Goppisberger Music Festival. As a 2009 recipient of the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Scholarship, Bahl will spend part of next season in Leipzig working privately with Maestro Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra as the city celebrates the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth..