B i o g r a p h y
Nimrod David Pfeffer is an Israeli conductor, who serves as Music Director of the Lyric Opera Company of Guatemala.
Mr. Pfeffer appeared recently with The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, The Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Hungarian State Opera Orchestra, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, The Juilliard Opera, and the New Israeli Opera.
In season 2021/22 he made his conducting debuts at the Metropolitan Opera with Le Nozze di Figaro, the Komische Oper Berlin with Die Zauberflöte, and the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra. He also conducted the season opening production of the New Israeli Opera with Barrie Kosky's production of Die Zauberflöte.
In season 2022/23 Mr. Pfeffer will return to the New Israeli Opera to conduct Theodor - a new opera in Hebrew by Yonatan Cnaan and Ido Ricklin focusing on two periods in the early life of the prophet of the State of Israel, Theodor Herzl. He will also make his conducting debut with the Hungarian National Orchestra in a program of works by Schubert, Liszt and Lajtha.
In 2016 Mr. Pfeffer was named Music Director of the Lyric Opera Company of Guatemala, after conducting the company's inaugural production of Verdi's Rigoletto. In the following seasons he conducted in Guatemala new productions of L’Elisir d’Amore, La Bohème, and La Traviata.
Mr. Pfeffer is also a concert pianist who performs regularly as soloist with orchestras, recitalist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist. He performed as soloist in such venues as New York's Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and The Metropolitan Opera, the Warsaw Philharmonic Hall, the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, and other major venues in the USA, Europe, and Asia.
A new album of his live piano recordings, featuring works by Bach, Schumann, and Chopin, was released this season on all streaming platforms.
Dedicated to promoting dialogue between Arabs and Jews in Israel, Mr. Pfeffer received the Davis Projects for Peace Award for presenting a fundraiser in honor of peace at Carnegie Hall.
Mr. Pfeffer holds a Master's Degree in Orchestral Conducting as a student of Alan Gilbert at The Juilliard School, as a recipient of the Bruno Walter Scholarship.
Upon graduation from Juilliard he was awarded the Charles Schiff Conducting Prize and the Norman Benzaquen Career Advancement Grant. He also holds a Master’s Degree and Professional Studies Diplomas in Piano Performance and in Orchestral Conducting from Mannes College of Music, and is a graduate of The Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. He was a recipient of grants from the Bagby Foundation for the Musical Arts and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.
Among his teachers were Pnina Salzman, Vadim Monastyrski, Gideon Hatzor, Michael Wolpe, André Hajdu, Victor Rosenbaum, Carl Schachter, Claude Frank, Byron Janis, Alan Gilbert, and Richard Goode.