James Judd, a British conductor who has been music director of the Florida Philharmonic - with which he made an acclaimed recording of Mahler’s First Symphony - and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, has taken over his first New York ensemble, the Little Orchestra Society. He succeeds Dino Anagnost, who led the orchestra from 1979 until his death in 2011, and is the third director in the ensemble’s history, which goes back to 1947, when it was founded by Mr. Anagnost’s predecessor, Thomas Scherman.
Mr. Judd, 63, began his career as an assistant conductor to Lorin Maazel at the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1970s, and in addition to his positions in Florida and New Zealand he has been the associate music director of Claudio Abbado’s European Community Youth Orchestra, and was a founder of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, with which he has toured widely.
He has also conducted many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig and the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. And he has built an impressive discography that includes works of Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin, Elgar and Vaughan Williams.
The orchestra was best known during Mr. Anagnost’s tenure for offering concerts that would appeal to children as well as adults, mainly through clever thematic programming. In addition to its regular concerts the orchestra performs in public school classrooms around New York. Mr. Judd has music education on his resume as well: he founded the Miami Music Project, which offers music instruction and performing opportunities to students.
Mr. Judd’s tenure began officially on Saturday, although in practical terms it begins when the orchestra starts its new season with a performance of Stravinsky’s “Firebird,†with Asian puppetry, dance and special lighting, at the New York City Center on Nov. 23 and 24. Other highlights of the season are an adaptation of “Hansel and Gretel,†with a new libretto by Craig Shemin (April 5), and Lemony Snicket’s “The Composer Is Dead,†with music by Nathaniel Stookey and a libretto by Daniel Handler, sharing a program with Kenji Bunch’s “Embrace,†an electric violin concerto (May 17).
