Danail Rachev

Music Director & Conductor

Heralded by critics as “a musician of real depth, sensitivity and authority,” Danail Rachev is currently in his third season as music director and conductor of the Eugene Symphony, a title that has previously been held by renowned conductors Marin Alsop, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, and Giancarlo Guerrero.  Highlights of the 2011-2012 season with the Eugene Symphony include performances with world-renowned guest artists such as Emanuel Ax, Midori, and André Watts and leading the orchestra in performances of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, Beethoven’s Eroica, John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls and Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, featuring special guest Tom Brokaw, as part of the Association’s new Counterpoint initiative, which strives to engage new audiences and reinvigorate existing patrons through humanities-infused programming.

Highlights of the 2010-11 season with the Eugene Symphony included performances with such guest artists as Sarah Chang, Jon Kimura Parker, Alisa Weilerstein and Itzhak Perlman; leading the Eugene Symphony Chorus in an all-Beethoven performance featuring the Ninth Symphony; and conducting the Eugene Symphony premiere of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40. 

In addition to the Eugene Symphony, Rachev has conducted orchestras worldwide, including the Auckland Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony, London Philharmonic, Orquestra Nacional do Porto, Orquesta Sinfonica de Asturias, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony, and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.  Rachev has also been featured in concerts with the Baltimore Symphony, CityMusic Cleveland, Grand Rapids Symphony, Nashville Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 

Rachev was Assistant Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 2008-2010 and the Dallas Symphony from 2005-2008, where he led numerous public concerts and education programs. Of his main series debut the Dallas Morning News wrote: "One of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's best concerts of the past year....start to finish, assistant conductor Danail Rachev got the music unfailingly right, and viscerally compelling."

In 2002-2003 Rachev was the first ever Conducting Fellow of the New World Symphony where he studied with Michael Tilson Thomas and worked alongside him on many occasions. His debut and subsequent appearances in numerous subscription, family, and chamber music concerts were met with consistent critical acclaim. In his native Bulgaria Rachev has worked with several ensembles including the Russe State Opera, where he led performances of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

Danail Rachev was born in Shumen, Bulgaria and trained at the State Musical Academy in Sofia, where he received degrees in orchestral and choral conducting. He moved to the United States to study at the Peabody Conservatory on a full scholarship, graduating in 2001. His conducting teachers have included Gustav Meier, Michael Tilson Thomas, Vassil Kazandjiev, David Zinman, and Leonard Slatkin.

More information regarding Danail Rachev is available through his website at www.danailrachev.com. 
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