James Judd

James Judd, born in 1949, made his first mark as Lorin Maazel's assistant at the Cleveland Orchestra, having trained at Trinity College of Music in London, and was associate music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra under Claudio Abbado. Fourteen seasons with the Florida Philharmonic, from 1987 to 2001, overlapped with the music directorship of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra between 1999 and 2007, which he took on international tours and into a recording programme for Naxos; he holds its music director emeritus title. He became music director of the Israel Symphony Orchestra Rishon LeZion in 2014, was chief conductor of the Slovak Philharmonic from 2017 to 2021 and became artistic director in Daejeon in 2016. He founded the Miami Music Project, which teaches music to children in the city. He took the New Zealand Symphony on its first tour of the major European halls, including a Proms debut, and his Florida years left recordings of Walton, Bernstein and Mahler; the Mahler First won a Diapason d'Or and the Toblacher prize, and he recorded Elgar's First Symphony with the Halle. He has also held posts with the Orchestre National de Lille and the Adelaide Symphony, conducts at English National Opera, Glyndebourne and the Wexford Festival, and led Britten's War Requiem with the Romanian Radio Orchestra at the Enescu Festival. The Miami Music Project dates from 2008.