Guest Conductor

Gábor Káli

Gábor Káli was born in Budapest and received piano and violin lesson when he was still young. From 1997 to 2001, he studied piano at the Béla Bartók Conservatoire, winning a number of prizes in national piano and chamber music competitions.

From 2004, he studied piano with Péter Nagy and conducting with Tamás Gál at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and continued his conducting studies from 2004 to 2009, initially as an Erasmus student and then as a regular student, with Lutz Köhler and Harry Curtis at the University of the Arts in Berlin. He graduated in 2008.

During his studies in Berlin, Gábor Káli worked as a repetiteur and teacher in the voice classes of Julie Kaufmann. As a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra, he performed as a pianist in the tour conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The support provided by the Conductorsʼ Forum of the German Music Council enabled him to take part in conducting courses with famous conductors and teachers. He attended courses, for example, with Kurt Masur, Bernard Haitink, Peter Eötvös, Colin Meters and Sian Edwards. In addition, he has been awarded scholarships by the Paul Hindemith Gesellschaft, Berlin, several times.

From 2009 to 2011, Gábor Káli worked at Theater Aachen as solo repetiteur and conductor. From 2011 to 2015, he was 2nd Concert Master and Assistant to GMD Marcus Bosch at the Nuremberg State Theatre, from 2015 to 2018 he was 1st Concert Master and Deputy to the GMD there.

Guest conducting positions took him to Theater Münster, the Darmstadt State Theatre and the Hungarian State Opera Budapest. Gábor Káli has also performed as a guest conductor with the Stuttgart Philharmonic, the Zlin Philharmonic Festival Orchestra, the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic, the Weiner Szász Chamber Orchestra and the Sonarten Ensemble for Contemporary Music in Barcelona, amongst others.