Lawrence Foster

Lawrence Foster (born October 23, 1941) is an American conductor of Romanian ancestry.

Foster was born in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish-Romanian parents. His father died when Foster was three years old. He was later adopted by his stepfather, from whom he took the surname Foster.

Foster studied conducting with German conductor Fritz Zweig and piano with Joanna Grauden, both in Los Angeles. His other teachers and mentors have included: Karl Böhm, Bruno Walter, Henry Lewis, and Franz Waxman.

Foster became the conductor of the San Francisco Ballet at the age of 18, and served as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. He was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood in 1966. In 1969 he was named chief guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He has held music directorships with the Houston Symphony, the Ojai Music Festival, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia, among others.

In 1990, Foster was appointed music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

From 2002 to 2013, Foster was the music director of the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon, Portugal. He also served as music director of the Orchestre National de Montpellier and the Opéra National de Montpellier from 2009 to 2012. Foster was music director of Opéra de Marseille and the Orchestre philharmonique de Marseille from 2012 to 2023. From 2019 to 2023, Foster was artistic director and chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR).

Foster is particularly noted as an interpreter of the works of George Enescu, and has made a comprehensive survey of commercial recordings of Enescu's music. He served as artistic director of the George Enescu Festival from 1998 to 2001. In 2003, Foster was decorated by the President for services to Romanian music.

In 2023, Foster was awarded the Romanian National Order of Merit, Commander, for his contribution to Romanian culture and promotion of the music of Enescu.

Foster has recorded commercially for such labels as Pentatone, including Gordon Getty's opera Usher House, Schumann's symphonies, orchestral works by Kodály, Bartók and Ligeti, and piano and violin concertos by Bruch, Korngold, Rachmaninoff, Grieg and Chopin, with various soloists. His recording of Enescu's Oedipe was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros in France.

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