Gabriel Chmura

Gabriel Chmura was born in 1946 in Wrocław

Gabriel Chmura was born in 1946 in Wrocław, Poland, to Holocaust survivors Yechiel Chmura and Zosia Litwak. He began piano lessons as a child and immigrated to Israel at age 11.

In 1960 he entered the Thelma Yellin high school for music in Tel Aviv, where he studied piano with Natan Mishori. He went on to the Tel Aviv music academy, studying piano, composition and conducting. In 1968 he studied in Paris with Pierre Dervaux, and in 1969 and 1970 he studied in Vienna with Hans Swarowsky.

In 1970 he won second place at a conducting competition in Besançon, France. In 1971 he won first prize at the Herbert von Karajan competition for young conductors and was invited to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic. That year he also won a gold medal at the Cantelli competition at La Scala in Milan.

He became music director of the Aachen opera orchestra in 1974 and of the Bochum Symphony in 1983. In 1987 he took the same post at the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and in 2001 at the Polish National Radio Orchestra in Katowice. He died in Brussels in November 2020.