Charles Ansbacher holds titled positions with orchestras in Boston, Moscow and Sarajevo. Among his highly acclaimed performances were an all-Brahms program at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, and the same work in Belgrade with American and Russian soloists. His primary relationship is with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, which he created in 2000 as a gift to his home community. He leads the orchestra at Boston’s historic Hatch Shell, and at other locations throughout Boston during the summer.
In the mid-nineties, while residing in Vienna, Ansbacher led multiple performances of important Austrian ensembles, including the Vienna State Opera, the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and the Innsbruck Philharmonic. He also conducted the Sarajevo Philharmonic in performances throughout Austria, including at the famed Salzburg Grosse Festspielhaus, and Vienna’s City Hall. He has conducted major orchestras in Canada, Colombia, Israel, Ecuador, Italy, Lithuania, South Africa, South Korea, and of course the United States. However, his main thrust has been nations in political transition, such as Azerbaijian, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. He has organized cross-cultural exchanges, such as bringing the Sarajevo Philharmonic to Italy and Austria; leading members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in their famed Symphony Hall featuring Croatian pianist, Ivo Pogorelich, to celebrate the opening of the Croatian consulate; conducting the world premiere of the Mandela Portrait in Johannesburg, South Africa, then bringing the piece to the United States in 2004; and conducting the Jerusalem Symphony with a Palestinian soloist, Saleem Abboud-Ashkar in December 2005. Due to his efforts to bridge international communities, President Bill Clinton once called Ansbacher “the unofficial ambassador of America’s music.”
Building upon multiple concerts with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in that city’s Tchaikovsky Hall, as well as the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, Ansbacher has conducted the MSO on seven CD’s. The Landmarks Orchestra annually incubates a new work for children, and four of these are available on MSO CD’s: Make Way for Ducklings, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, The Journey of Phyllis Wheatley, and Lifting the Curse: The Story of the Red Sox. For adults, Ansbacher has led the MSO recording Beethoven Fourths: his Symphony and Piano Concerto, as well as Landmarks Overtures, and his most recent release, Dolce.
As a young man, Charles Ansbacher devoted almost twenty years to building the Colorado Springs Symphony, which named him Conductor Laureate as he left. He was known throughout the Rocky Mountain region not only for his regular concert season, but also the music he brought to hundreds of thousands of diverse families through often-televised, innovative outdoor concerts, and the Christmas Pops on Ice that featured Olympic figure skating stars.
Beyond music, Charles Ansbacher applied art to public policy-making when, as a White House Fellow; he was co-chair of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Task Force on the Use of Design, Art, and Architecture in Transportation. His interest in design and architecture led to his appointment by Mayor Pena to the Blue Ribbon Committee for the design of the new Denver International Airport. He stayed in the policy realm as Chair of the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by Governor Romer. Soon after moving to Massachusetts, he accepted a one-year appointment as a “Visiting Scholar” in the Harvard Music Department. As he has throughout his career, Ansbacher serves on the board of numerous community-focused, non-profit organizations. He and his wife, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, have three children.
