Patrick Gardner, guest conductor

Patrick Gardner’s performances have been acclaimed by New York audiences, critics, and an international roster of composers whose orchestral and choral works he has conducted. Active in premiering new music, he has won the praise of such notable composers as William Bolcom, John Harbison, Lou Harrison, Jennifer Higdon, and Lukas Foss. Mr. Gardner conducted The St. Cecilia Chorus in Beethoven’s Mass in C at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in February of 2009. Last spring he conducted The St. Cecilia Chorus and Orchestra in the Bach B Minor Mass at Carnegie Hall.

Now in his twentieth season as director of the Riverside Choral Society (RCS), Mr. Gardner is also director of choral activities at Rutgers University, where he conducts the Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir and the Rutgers University Glee Club. In the past two years he has conducted the Verdi Requiem and Carmina Burana with RCS at Alice Tully Hall last year. In the spring of 2006, RCS and the Rutgers University Kirkpatrick Choir appeared at Lincoln Center with the Kirov Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic in performances of Shostakovich’s Second and Third Symphonies under the baton of Valery Gergiev. In 2006, Mr. Gardner prepared the men of his combined choirs for performances at Lincoln Center, with the Kirov, of Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, Babi Yar. In September 2006, Mr. Gardner and the men’s choirs, accompanied by Mischa and Cipa Dichter, at Safra Hall at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, presented the world premiere of the two-piano version of the first movement of Babi Yar. In 2005, he prepared RCS for presentations of Mahler’s Second Symphony with Gergiev and the Kirov Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and the NJPAC. The New York Times noted RCS’s “sublime reading of the choral finale.”

Mr. Gardner’s critically acclaimed preparation of the choral work in Handel’s L’Allegro, performed at Lincoln Center with the Mark Morris Dance Group in the summer of 2005, led to his engagement to prepare Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts and Purcell’s Dido & Æneas as part of the Mark Morris Dance Group’s 25th anniversary season at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This past summer Mr. Gardner once again prepared RCS for performances of Handel’s L’Allegro with the MMDG as part of the Mostly Mozart Festival. Mr. Gardner will conduct the Riverside Choral Society in a performance of the Bach B Minor Mass at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on May 7th 2011.

Recently Mr. Gardner presented concerts in Taichung, Taiwan, and in 2007 he taught master classes for professional conductors in the Netherlands for NOVK.

Mr. Gardner has prepared the Riverside Choral Society for the Mostly Mozart Festival in performances of Mozart’s Requiem and C minor Mass, Haydn’s Creation, and numerous other major works. In the past decade, RCS appeared with both the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and London’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In the past several years Mr. Gardner has conducted RCS in its own Lincoln Center performances of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, Brahms’ Requiem, Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Mozart’s C minor Mass, and Lou Harrison’s La Koro Sutro. In 2005, Mr. Gardner conducted Haydn’s Creation at Rutgers University, and the previous year he conducted Handel’s Opus 4 Organ Concertos and Coronation Anthem No. 3 with Musica Raritana, a period instrument orchestra of professional instrumentalists and graduate students at Rutgers University. In recent orchestral performances at Rutgers and with the Riverside Choral Society Orchestra Mr. Gardner has conducted Brahms’ Second Symphony, Schubert’s Fifth Symphony, Haydn’s Symphony No. 88, Shostakovich and Mozart piano concerti, Ibert’s Flute Concerto, Arvo Pärt’s Canticum in Memoriam Benjamin Britten and Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral.

Mr. Gardner prepared the Rutgers University Glee Club for a performance of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder with the Philadelphia Singers and The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. He was the chorus master for the internationally acclaimed Robert Altman production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Opéra de Lille in France.

Mr. Gardner has recorded for Naxos, Albany, Ethereal, and Folkways records.