In his second season in Lille, Weilerstein leads a wide-ranging series of concerts with a particular focus on French music, performing works of Ravel, Franck, Lili Boulanger, Barraine, Dutilleux, Saint-Saens, Tailleferre, and Offenbach. He also welcomes Noah Bendix-Balgley, first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, in a programme that pairs Bendix-Balgley’s Klezmer-inspired concerto Fidl Fantazy with Shostakovich’s 10th symphony. In Aalborg, he completes his 2-year long exploration of the Brahms symphonies, and focuses on other late Romantic giants such as Mahler and Zemlinsky. Elsewhere in 25/26, he returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in their subscription season, to the BBC Proms and Bridgewater Hall with the BBC Philharmonic, and returns to the Vancouver, Gothenburg, and City of Birmingham Symphony orchestras. He also makes his debut with the Israel Philharmonic.
Weilerstein has conducted many of the world’s top orchestras, including in more recent seasons the Staatskapelle Dresden, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony and New York Philharmonic orchestras. He regularly collaborates with leading soloists such as Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Vilde Frang and Matthias Goerne. From 2015–2021, he was Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne with whom he recorded the complete Beethoven symphonies and a disc of 20th and 21st century works by Ives, Ethel Smyth, William Grant Still and Caroline Shaw.
Born into a musical family, Weilerstein’s commitment to classical music was inspired by his experience on a youth orchestra tour to Central America, during which he performed for audiences that had never heard a live orchestra. He studied violin and conducting at the New England Conservatory and in 2009 won both the First and Audience Prizes at the Malko Competition in Copenhagen. He later served as Assistant Conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 2012–2015.
In 2017, inspired by Leonard Bernstein’s passion for making classical music accessible, Weilerstein launched the podcast Sticky Notes, which now reaches listeners in 190 countries and has been downloaded over seven million times.
