- Herbert Blomstedt was born on July 11, 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. He is known for Angels Don't Sleep Here (2002), True Colors (1991) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1998).
- A devout Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt does not rehearse on Friday nights or Saturdays, the Sabbath in Seventh-day Adventism. He does, however, conduct concerts, since he considers actual performances to be an expression of his religious devotion rather than secular work.
- Blomstedt is most noted for his performances of German and Austrian composers, such as Beethoven, Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss and Paul Hindemith, and also as a champion of Scandinavian composers, such as Edvard Grieg, Franz Berwald, Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen.
- At age 98, he continues to conduct, and in February 2025, he completed a series of concerts with the San Francisco Symphony. In October 2025, he conducted a series of concerts with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
- He won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953 and the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955.
- He studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and the University of Uppsala, followed by studies of contemporary music at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1949, Baroque music with Paul Sacher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and further conducting studies with Igor Markevitch, Jean Morel at the Juilliard School, and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood's Berkshire Music Center.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
