Zubin Mehta (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of Western classical music, one of the most celebrated of the past sixty years. He has been music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and, for half a century, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Though he has lived abroad since he was eighteen, he has kept his Indian citizenship.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Zubin Mehta |
| Born | 29 April 1936, Bombay (Mumbai), India |
| Age | 90 |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Education | St Mary’s School and St Xavier’s College, Bombay; Vienna Academy of Music |
| Occupation | Conductor |
| Positions | Music director, Montreal Symphony (1961–1967), Los Angeles Philharmonic (1962–1978), New York Philharmonic (1978–1991), Israel Philharmonic (1977–2019) |
| Awards | Padma Bhushan (1966), Padma Vibhushan (2001), Israel Prize special award (1991), Tagore Award (2013) |
| Spouse | Nancy Kovack (m. 1969) |
| Children | 4 |
Early Life
He was born in Bombay into a Parsi family. His father, Mehli Mehta, a self-taught violinist, founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra and the Bombay String Quartet, and the house was full of music. As a boy Zubin listened to his father’s rehearsals and to gramophone records, and at sixteen he conducted the orchestra in rehearsal when his father was away.
His family intended him to be a doctor, and he began pre-medical studies at St Xavier’s College. He gave them up after two terms.
Vienna
In 1954, at eighteen, he went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music under the conducting teacher Hans Swarowsky, and played the double bass in orchestras. In 1958 he won the international conducting competition at Liverpool.
Career
North America
His rise was very fast. In 1961, having substituted for famous conductors in Vienna and Berlin, he became music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and the next year, at twenty-six, of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the youngest person to head a major American orchestra. He stayed in Los Angeles for sixteen years and made it an orchestra of international rank. From 1978 to 1991 he was music director of the New York Philharmonic, the longest tenure in its history.
Israel
He first conducted the Israel Philharmonic in 1961. He became its music adviser in 1969, music director in 1977 and, in 1981, music director for life. He conducted it during the wars of 1967 and 1973 and under missile attack in 1991, and gave more than three thousand concerts with it before retiring in 2019. He also set up a music school for Arab Israeli children.
Opera and Europe
He was chief conductor of the Maggio Musicale in Florence from 1985 to 2017 and music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich from 1998 to 2006. He has conducted the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concert five times.
Famous concerts
- **The Three Tenors:** he conducted the concerts of Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras in Rome in 1990 and Los Angeles in 1994, the best-selling classical recordings ever made
- **Sarajevo, 1994:** Mozart’s Requiem in the ruins of the National Library during the siege
- **India:** tours with the New York, Israel and Bavarian orchestras, and a concert in the Shalimar Gardens at Srinagar in 2013
Recent Years
He has had treatment for cancer and other illnesses and has reduced his schedule. He turned ninety in April 2026.
India
With his brother Zarin he set up the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation in Mumbai, which teaches Western classical music to children. He has said that he never considered giving up his Indian passport.
Personal Life
He married the Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958; they had a son and a daughter and divorced in 1964. She later married his brother. In 1969 he married the American actress Nancy Kovack. He lives in Los Angeles and Florence. His autobiography is titled The Score of My Life.
Featured image: Zubin Mehta in 1985. Photo by an unknown photographer, in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
