About this Artist
Newly appointed Chief Conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Christian Reif has established a reputation for his natural musicality, innovative programming, and technical command. Reif led seven programs, including the season-opening concerts and a tour of Sweden, in his inaugural season with the Gävle Symphony.
Since 2022, Reif has served as Music Director of the Lakes Area Music Festival in Minnesota, a monthlong summer festival committed to commissioning new works and to giving free concerts for the community with programming that ranges from opera and chamber music to symphonic performances.
Highlights of Reif’s 2023/24 season also include subscription appearances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony, and Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, plus summer festival appearances at the Grand Teton Music Festival and at Interlochen. Reif conducts his own arrangement of John Adams’ El Niño with the Cincinnati Symphony and with the American Modern Opera Company on tour to Stanford University, Yale University, the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City, and at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.
With an equal footing in North America and Europe, Reif has conducted the symphony orchestras of San Francisco, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, Colorado, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Louisville, as well as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In Europe, he has performed repeatedly with Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Hallé Orchestra, and Stavanger Symphony, as well as the Gävle Symphony.
Reif leads London’s Philharmonia Orchestra and provides piano accompaniment on soprano Julia Bullock’s album Walking in the Dark. The album, praised by Gramophone as “illuminating,” won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album. In 2020, Reif and Bullock recorded a series of at-home virtual “Songs of Comfort.” NPR Music featured the duo in a “Tiny Desk Concert” and The New York Times included them on its “Best Classical Music of 2020” list.
From 2016 to 2019, Reif was Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, after being Conducting Fellow at the New World Symphony from 2014 to 2016 and at Tanglewood Music Center in 2015 and 2016.