Carnegie Hall

Clive Gillinson

Executive and Artistic Director

Clive Gillinson became the Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in July 2005, having been appointed the previous season. He is responsible for developing the artistic concepts for Carnegie Hall presentations in its three halls—the celebrated Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage (cap. 2804), innovative Zankel Hall (cap. 600), and intimate Weill Recital Hall (cap. 268)—representing up to 170 performances each season, ranging from orchestral concerts, chamber music, solo recitals, to jazz, world, and popular music. He oversees the management of all aspects of the world-renowned venue, including strategic and artistic planning, resource development, education, finance, and administration and operations for the Weill Music Institute, which, every year, taps the resources of Carnegie Hall to bring music education and social impact programs to more than 800,000 people in the New York City metropolitan region, across the United States, and around the world, in addition to many more online.

Since his arrival in New York, Mr. Gillinson has worked to build on the quality, creativity, diversity, and extraordinary history for which Carnegie Hall is known worldwide. Under his leadership, Carnegie Hall has embarked upon many bold new directions in its concert and education programming, including augmenting and integrating current offerings to create large-scale multi-cultural citywide festivals. Partnering with many of the greatest cultural institutions in New York City, the festivals use the full range of the Hall’s artistic and educational resources to take audiences on journeys of discovery that extend beyond single performances and concert series to encompass theater, literature, dance, the visual arts, talks and film.

Carnegie Hall’s first major international festival, Berlin in Lights, was presented in November 2007, exploring the vibrant city of Berlin. It was followed by two city-wide festivals examining the dynamic culture and distinctive history of American culture—Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds in fall 2008 and Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy in spring 2009.  Ancient Paths, Modern Voices, exploring Chinese music and culture took place in fall 2009. These were followed by JapanNYC, an ambitious two-part festival in December 2010 and spring 2011; Voices from Latin America in November/December 2012; Vienna: City of Dreams featuring the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna State Opera in February/March 2014; Ubuntu: Music and Arts of South Africa in October/November 2014; La Serenissima: Music and Arts from the Venetian Republic in February 2017; The 60’s: The Years that Changed America in January-March 2018; Migrations: The Making of America in March/April 2019; Voices of Hope: Artists in Times of Oppression in spring 2021, and Afrofuturism in February/March 2022. Throughout its 2022-2023 season, Carnegie Hall paid tribute to the remarkable contributions of women to music, across multiple genres. In January 2024, the Hall will present Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice, its largest festival yet.

As a demonstration of his strong commitment to the belief that the arts should be central to society and accessible to all, Mr. Gillinson conceived and helped implement Ensemble Connect—a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute in partnership with the New York City Department of Education. Established in 2007, Ensemble Connect is an innovative fellowship program for the finest US-based post-graduate musicians.  Designed to help bridge the gap between their academic and professional lives, the two-year program provides the best young professional musicians with top quality performance opportunities, advanced musical training, and intensive teaching instruction and hands-on experience working in New York City public schools.

In 2013, Carnegie Hall launched a new major initiative for young musicians. The National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America is a free program that invites the finest players, ages 16–19, from across the country to gather with their peers, a faculty of leading orchestral musicians, and a different celebrated conductor and soloist each year for a two-week, intensive summer residency followed by a major national or international tour. The first NYO-USA tour in summer 2013, in which every concert sold out, began at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, continued on to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and finished with a televised concert at the BBC Proms in London. Since then, the orchestra has toured across Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the United States, introducing America to its own national youth orchestra. In summer 2016, Carnegie Hall expanded on NYO-USA to launch NYO2, a free program for outstanding younger musicians, ages 14-17, with a particular focus on attracting talented students from communities traditionally underserved and underrepresented in the classical orchestral field. In 2018, the Hall launched NYO Jazz for the finest young jazz musicians in the US (ages 16-19), which also tours the world every summer as youth ambassadors for the US.

In 2007, Carnegie Hall announced the transformation of its two Studio Towers to create a home for the Weill Music Institute’s music education programs on the upper floors of its landmark building. This renovation project was completed in 2014 when the Hall unveiled its new Judith and Burton Resnick Education Wing, featuring 24 inspirational rooms designed for music education; beautiful public spaces including the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Music Room and the Weill Terrace just outside; and a new research room within the Hall’s Susan W. Rose Archives.  There is a vital and inspirational link created by having Carnegie Hall’s education programs housed within the Hall itself, creating connections among audiences, artists, students, and educators; enabling the synergy of having education spaces working in conjunction with performance venues; and allowing the public served by our education programs to tap into the inspirational energy that can only be found within Carnegie Hall. The scope of the Studio Towers Renovation Project also included the complete renovation and updating of the Hall’s backstage spaces and the creation for the first time of integrated and contemporary new office spaces.

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Clive Gillinson was born in Bangalore, India, in 1946; his mother was a professional cellist and his father, a businessman, also wrote and painted. Mr. Gillinson began studying the cello at the age of eleven and played in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain for three years. He went to London University to study mathematics, but realizing that music had to be his life, entered the Royal Academy of Music, where he gained a Recital Diploma and won the top cello prize. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Music, he was offered membership in the Philharmonia Orchestra’s cello section.

A few months later, in 1970, he accepted a job in the London Symphony Orchestra cello section and was elected to the Board of Directors of the self-governing orchestra in 1976, also serving as Finance Director. In 1984, he was asked by the Board to become Managing Director of the LSO, a position he held for 21 years, until he was recruited to become the Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in 2005.

Under Mr. Gillinson’s leadership, the LSO initiated some of that city’s most innovative and successful artistic festivals, working with many leading artists of the day. In the international touring arena, the LSO established an annual residency in New York from 1997 and was a founding partner in the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, in 1990, with Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas. Mr. Gillinson believes in taking great music to society at large. In this area, his initiatives with the London Symphony Orchestra included the development of the first symphony orchestra music education programs in the UK, LSO Discovery; and the creation of LSO St. Luke’s, the UBS and LSO Music Education Center, which involved the restoration and reconstruction of St. Luke’s, a magnificent, but previously derelict 18th-century church. Mr. Gillinson also created LSO Live, the orchestra's award-winning international recording label.

Mr. Gillinson served as Chairman of the Association of British Orchestras; was one of the founding Trustees of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts; and was founding Chairman of the Management Committee of the Clore Leadership Programme. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the 1999 New Year Honours List and received the 2004 Making Music Sir Charles Grove Prize for his outstanding contribution to British music. Mr. Gillinson was appointed Knight Bachelor in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2005, the only orchestra manager ever to be honored with a Knighthood. 

Mr. Gillinson received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from the City of London University in 1995 and was named an honorary Freeman of the City of London. In addition, he is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music and received the Garrett Award for outstanding achievement in encouraging business sponsorship of the arts. Mr. Gillinson received an Honorary Doctorate from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in May 2007.  In May 2010, he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Skidmore College and was recipient of the Eastman School of Music’s Luminary Award. In 2011 and 2015, he served on the cello jury of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and chaired the cello jury for the 2019 Competition. He received the 2012 International Citation of Merit at the New York 2012 ISPA (International Society for the Performing Arts) Congress. In 2012, Mr. Gillinson was invited to become a Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Mr. Gillinson is also an Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (HonFGS) and for a number of years served on the Honorary Board of the Brubeck Institute of the University of the Pacific. In recognition of Carnegie Hall’s successful Vienna: City of Dreams festival and continued close collaboration with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Austrian government honored Mr. Gillinson by bestowing upon him its prestigious Grand Decoration of Honor in Silver for services to the Republic of Austria. In addition, he received the Theodore S. Kesselman Award from the New York Youth Symphony in October 2014, the Chinese Cultural Foundation Global Achievement Award in 2014, and The Orchestra of St. Luke’s Gift of Music Award in spring 2015. Mr. Gillinson was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in 2017. Mr. Gillinson recently joined the Advisory Council of The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the University of Oxford and The Nippon Music Foundation Instrument Loan Committee.

Mr. Gillinson co-authored a book, Better to Speak of It, published by Arch Street Press in October 2016. Centered on core management and personal values, the book offers specific, first-hand experiences from Mr. Gillinson and many leaders within key cultural, educational, nonprofit and corporate fields, appealing to readers ranging from nonprofit managers, arts-administration students, and the public interested in the health and well-being of the arts, as well as corporate executives and staffs seeking insight into how creativity can be applied with substantial results. Better to Speak of It has also been published in Japanese by Nikkei.