Eiji Oue
Music Director

The Minnesota Orchestra's ninth music director, Japanese-born Eiji Oue, pronounces his name "AY-gee OH-way." A remarkable young conductor, whose passionate performances make the classics sound all new, Eiji Oue comes to Minnesota from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he was music director of the Erie Symphony. Why would the Orchestra take a risk on such a little-known conductor? As a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, no one could question his musical chops. As a personality...well, there is just no one like him. The media says it best:

"Oue's enthusiasm was infectious," THE WASHINGTON POST
"There aren't many musicians who can adroitly balance passion with polish. Conductor Eiji Oue is one," DETROIT NEWS
"Beware, this conductor may soon have you eating Beethoven and Mahler out of his hand," MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

Appointed the Minnesota Orchestra's ninth music director in November l993, Eiji Oue began his tenure at the start of the 1995-96 season. Oue first conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in May 1992, and during the 1993-94 season he led the Minnesota Orchestra in two weeks of subscription concerts and returned for one week of its annual summer festival, Viennese Sommerfest 1994.

A native of Hiroshima, Japan, Oue began piano lessons at the age of four. At fifteen he entered the Toho School of Music as a performance major, beginning his conducting studies that same year with Hideo Saito, who had been the teacher of Seiji Ozawa. Oue first came to the United States in 1978 when Maestro Ozawa invited him to spend the summer as a student at the Tanglewood Music Center. While he was at Tanglewood that summer, the New England Conservatory of Music invited Oue to enroll in their conducting program. He studied with Larry Livingston and was awarded an artist diploma in conducting.

It was at Tanglewood that Oue met Maestro Leonard Bernstein, who became his mentor and colleague, featuring his young protege in concerts around the world and sharing the podium with him at such places as La Scala, the Vienna State Opera and the Opera de Paris-Bastille, as well as Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, Rome and other major musical capitals. Besides studies with his principal teachers, Bernstein and Ozawa, Oue participated in master classes led by Claudio Abbado and Colin Davis; Davis subsequently invited him to spend two months as an apprentice at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden. When Kurt Masur made his United States debut at Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, Oue assembled an orchestra for a master class with Masur in which he was the only conductor participant.

In May 1995, Oue completes his fourth and final season as music director of the Erie Philharmonic. Before that, he spent four years as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic. During his Buffalo tenure, Oue led Casual Classics and Downtowner series concerts and conducted an annual "Bill at the Phil" concert in which a star member of the Buffalo Bills football team participated.

Oue has guest conducted widely throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. On this continent he has led the Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, National Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Oakland Symphony and Hartford Symphony and has appeared at the Wolf Trap, Great Woods and Midland Festivals. Internationally, Oue has led the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the summer of 1990, Oue assisted Leonard Bernstein in the creation of the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, acting as resident conductor for the Festival Orchestra; he returned to the Festival the following two summers, serving as resident conductor and guest conductor. Also in the summer of 1990, during the London Symphony Orchestra's tour of Japan, he conducted a performance attended by the Emperor and Empress in their first public appearance following the death of Emperor Hirohito. At the inauguration of the new city hall in Tokyo, Oue led the Shinsei Symphony and a chorus of two thousand voices in a special outdoor performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Oue has won numerous honors and awards, among them the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood in 1980 and both first prize and the Hans Haring Gold Medal in the 1981 conducting competition at the Salzburg Mozarteum. And some honors are unofficial: the family of Leonard Bernstein presented Oue with the baton and concert jacket from the maestro's last concert.