Join Gabryel Smith, director of archives and exhibitions for the New York Philharmonic, for a lecture exploring the musical contributions of powerhouse conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. This event is part of programming for the Main Library Gallery’s spring 2026 exhibition, Orchestrating Community: The Public Service of Iowa Conductor James Dixon.
About the lecture:
Mitropoulos commanded the world’s top podiums in the golden era of orchestral music that was the mid-20th century United States. Music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1949–1958, these innovative postwar years supported this eccentric and driven “monk of music,” who danced, jumped, crouched, even imitated a boxer’s punches to direct American firsts, from Mahler to Schoenberg.
Mitropoulos’s music library, left to his protégé James Dixon in Iowa City, made its way to New York for digitization before landing in permanent residence at the University of Iowa’s Rita Benton Music Library in 2019. While Mitropoulos never conducted from the printed page, these scores reveal much about his method and style, completely unique to him. They underscore his absolute devotion to the music, an uncanny ability to channel the notes rather than read them, eliciting taut, edge-of-the seat interpretations that changed the future of orchestral performance.
About the speaker:
Gabryel Smith is director of archives and exhibitions for the New York Philharmonic, where he oversees the collections and historical public programs of America’s oldest orchestra. Since 2009 he has curated over 50 digital and physical exhibits for the orchestra at David Geffen Hall, including touring exhibits to the Vienna Haus der Musik, the Austrian Cultural forums in New York and Washington, D.C., and the New York Historical Society. He has lectured about the New York Philharmonic’s history for audiences at Oxford, Princeton, Juilliard, New York University, the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, and around Lincoln Center as well as at conferences such as the Society of American Archivists. Smith has written articles for Sony Masterworks, WQXR, Playbill magazine, The Swiss Journal of Musicology, Prelude, Fugue, & Riffs, and regularly contributes to the Philharmonic’s weekly programs. Smith received his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from New York University, where he studied history and music.