Kent George Nagano (born November 22, 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator.
Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, while his parents were in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Morro Bay. He is Japanese American. He studied sociology and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduation he moved to San Francisco State University to study music. While there, he took composi...
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Kent George Nagano (born November 22, 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator.
Nagano was born in Berkeley, California, while his parents were in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He grew up in Morro Bay. He is Japanese American. He studied sociology and music at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduation he moved to San Francisco State University to study music. While there, he took composition courses from Grosvenor Cooper and Roger Nixon. He also studied at the École Normale de Musique in Paris.
His first conducting job was with the Opera Company of Boston, where he was assistant conductor to Sarah Caldwell. In 1978, he became the conductor of the Berkeley Symphony, his first music directorship. In January 2007, the orchestra announced that Nagano would step down from this position in 2009. During his tenure in Berkeley, Nagano became a champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen and initiated a correspondence with him.
In 1982,...
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