About Angel Gil-Ordóñez

A frequent guest conductor across Europe, the United States and Latin America, Angel Gil-Ordóñez holds the positions of Music Director/Conductor of PostClassical Ensemble in Washington, D.C., Principal Guest Conductor of New York’s Perspectives Ensemble, and Music Director of the Georgetown University Orchestra. He also serves as advisor for education and programming for Trinitate Philharmonia, a program in León, Mexico, modeled on Venezuela’s El Sistema.
Performances
The Star of Ethiopia: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Historic Visits to D.C. (1904-1910)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a black British composer who catapulted to fame with his 1898 oratorio Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.
The New Babylon: The Soviet silent film classic with Shostakovich’s score
This astonishing culminating achievement of the Soviet silent film era is an historical epic both whimsical and tragic, set during the 1871 Paris Commune. It is the first of Shostakovich’s historic collaborations with filmmaker Grigori Kozintsev —a relationship ending with their epochal King Lear of 1971.

News
How Two Classical Composers Feel About Losing the Pulitzer to Kendrick Lamar
Posted on April 18 at 12 pm
Insight on this year's historic Pulitzer Prizes for Music being awarded to rapper Kendrick Lamar... from finalists and classical composers Michael Gilbertson and Ted Hearne. https://slate.com/culture/2018/04/pulitzer-finalists-michael-gilbertson-and-ted-hearne-on-kendrick-lamars-win.html
Some classical fans are furious that the rapper won. The guys he beat are thrilled.
Home
Posted on April 15 at 7 pm
Stravinsky anyone? Don't miss his "Dumbarton Oaks" with our PostClassicals this Sat April 21 at the magnificent acoustics of the Dumbarton Church in Georgetown http://www.dumbartonconcerts.org/
- Plato
Narek Hakhnazaryan plays Tchaikovsky - Bowdoin Music Festival
Posted on April 14 at 10 am
Really honored to be back at Bowdoin International Music Festival this summer. This time accompanying two amazing winners of the Tchaikovsky Competition: Narek Hakhnazaryan and Itamar Zorman https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/subscription-series-performance-14/ https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/subscription-series-performance-18/
This evening’s program opens with one of Brahms’s proudest dispatches from the Austrian countryside where he enjoyed creative summertime retreats. Then, composer-in-residence John Harbison transports us from the New England sun to the oppressively dark expanse of a Wisconsin winter for Snow Coun...
Tickets2017
Posted on April 12 at 6 pm
Looking forward to presenting with our PostClassicals Stravinsky's magnificent "Dumbarton Oaks" at the beautiful Dumbarton Church on Saturday April 21! http://www.dumbartonconcerts.org/tickets2017/
In the press
Doppelgängers What does Schubert sound like on a jazzy bass trombone?
Article published on February 01, 2018 in The American Scholar
At the altar of change. PostClassical Becomes Ensemble-in-Residence at Washington National Cathedral
Article published on December 21, 2017 in The Washington Diplomat
Schubert 'Uncorked'
Podcast published on December 15, 2017 in WWFM Classical
PostClassical Ensemble takes up new Cathedral residence with music of protest
Concert review published on December 11, 2017 in The Washington Post
Ángel Gil-Ordóñez y su público norteamericano
Article published on December 07, 2017 in Beckmsser

My thoughts Blog
Reflections on Silvestre Revueltas
Working on Spanish repertoire –the music with which I started my career as a conductor– has helped me to understand the music of all cultures. Consider the internationally popular Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. The fact that Almodóvar is so unusual, so local (not just to Spain, but to Madrid), so true to his own vicinity in rendering feeling and experience – this is what makes him so universal. The more I studied the composers of Spain, the more I was able to appreciate the German or French repertoire – or, in the case of tonight’s concert, the music of Mexico.
Victoria, Falla and the Spanish tradition
Tomas Luis de Victoria is a product of the Siglo de Oro (“The Golden Century”) when Spain was the dominant European nation, Philip II was the powerful Spanish king – and Victoria was Europe’s greatest composer. He was born in Avila in 1548. He went to Rome as a young man and was befriended by Palestrina – the leading Italian church composer of the time. He succeeded Palestrina at the Roman Seminary in 1571 and was ordained a priest four years later. But he yearned to return to Spain, which he did some time in the 1590s as chaplain to the widowed sister of Philip II, living in a convent. He died in 1611, having in effect retired from the world.
What they say about Angel Reviews

Invigorating… Gil-Ordóñez led a vital rendition.
Alex Ross The New Yorker
Angel Gil-Ordóñez' insight into Shostakovich's music is astounding.
Solomon Volkov author of Testimony