DANIEL MENDELOW

Principal Trumpet – Sydney Symphony Orchestra (1978-2011)

Daniel Mendelow, the Sydney Symphony Orchestras former Principal Trumpet has long established a reputation as one of Australia’s finest brass performers and teachers.

Born in New York in 1954, he spent his early years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began his piano studies at the age of ten. His interest in music and orchestral performance in particular, was sparked quite early when he became the youngest members of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra at age thirteen, having studied the trumpet with Frank Ostrowski of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Daniel went on to further his studies at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, with Gene Young and Louis Davidson, graduating with Honours in 1976. That same year, he was awarded a Fellowship to the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood Festival which enabled him to continue his studies with such notables as Armando Ghitalla and Roger Voisin.

Later that same year, Daniel was offered the position of Principal Trumpet with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Israel. After one season with the JSO he was invited by Zubin Mehta to join the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra which toured Australia in 1978. It was during that tour that Daniel was offered the position of Principal Trumpet with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the position which he recently retired from nearly thirty-four years later.

Since being with the Sydney Symphony, Daniel has become a most sought-after soloist making guest appearances with ensembles and most orchestras throughout Australia. He has appeared as guest Principal Trumpet with the Melbourne, Queensland, West Australian and Tasmanian, and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, and as a featured soloist at the Australian Chamber Music Festival in Townsville. He has also made guest appearances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Mendelow has been Lecturer in Trumpet at the ANU School of Music in Canberra from 1991 to 2010, and has seen many of his students attain professional success in Australia as well as throughout the world. In fact, all the current members of the Orchestra\’s trumpet section have all been his students throughout the years!

He has been a guest Lecturer at the Academy of Performing Arts in Hong Kong, as well as having given successful Master Classes in Germany and the USA, at Cleveland Institute Of Music and his former school, Oberlin Conservatory. Daniel has been praised on numerous occasions by visiting conductors as well as SSO Music Directors past and present for his “big, open sparkling sound, lifting the entire orchestra, leading and driving the brass section”. Daniel now resides part of the year in Sarasota, Florida, where he is Trumpeter in Residence with the Church of the Redeemer, as well as taking part in chamber music and performing recitals in the area.