Eiji Oue

Who is Eiji Oue?

Eiji Oue is a Japanese conductor.

Oue began his conducting studies with Hideo Saito of the Toho Gakuen School of Music. In 1978, Seiji Ozawa invited him to spend the summer studying at the Tanglewood Music Center. While there, he met Leonard Bernstein, who became a mentor. Oue won the Tanglewood Koussevitzky Prize in 1980. He also studied under Bernstein as a conducting fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.

Oue became Music Director of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras in 1982, a post he held until 1989. He was music director of the Erie Philharmonic from 1990 to 1995. He has also served as associate conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1995 to 2002, he was music director of the Minnesota Orchestra. During his Minnesota tenure, the orchestra saw its attendance decline from 84% to 69% in capacity. Oue served as Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming from 1997 to 2003.

Following a tour in 1997 with the NDR Philharmonie Hannover, Oue was subsequently appointed its principal conductor in September 1998. In 2003, he was appointed principal conductor of the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra. Oue made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival in 2005 conducting Tristan und Isolde. He became music director of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona in September 2006. He is scheduled to step down from the Barcelona post after the 2009-2010 season.