Angel Gil-Ordóñez, Storyteller

ANGEL GIL-ORDÓÑEZ, Music Director, PostClassical Ensemble

I was studying in Madrid at the university and at the same time at the conservatory in April 1978. A conductor I knew only by name — but knew by reputation as a very strange person, difficult to deal with — arrived in Madrid as a guest conductor with the London Symphony. I went to that performance, and that’s the reason I’m a conductor right now, because that experience was a lifetime experience.

I never in my life heard an orchestra sound like this. I thought, “What is going on here?” It was a total discovery.

He conducted Romeo and Juliet by Prokofieff. And I never in my life heard an orchestra sound like this. I thought, “What is going on here?” It was a total discovery.

So it took me about five more years to finish my composition studies in Madrid and then I went to study with this genius, Sergiu Celibidache, in Germany for almost seven years. When I went to Munich he was the Music Director of the Munich Philharmonic. I stayed with him as his student, and his assistant on many occasions, until 1991 when I became the Associate Conductor for the National Symphony Orchestra of Spain in Madrid. This was the beginning of my professional career. So that’s my musical story.