Giordano Bellincampi is stepping down as Music Director of the Auckland Philharmonia at the end of the 2027 season, bringing a 12-year tenure to a close, the longest anyone has held the role.
The Italian-Danish conductor’s final concert in the position is pencilled in for late November 2027. After that, he moves into an honorary Music Director Laureate title rather than disappearing from the podium altogether, and the orchestra has already begun the search for his successor.
Twelve years is a long run for any music director, and Bellincampi’s has reshaped the Auckland Philharmonia as an institution as much as it has shaped its sound. Under his leadership, the orchestra moved from a freelance pool of players to a salaried ensemble, a structural shift that put it on a more even footing with the international orchestras it now regularly programmes alongside.
The 2027 season, which launches in October, is being framed as a farewell lap: expect his signature repertoire back on the programme, alongside the kind of high-profile soloists a departing music director tends to be given free rein to book.
For an orchestra this size, a music director search is not a quick process, and Bellincampi’s successor will inherit an ensemble that looks very different to the one he took over. Whoever it is will have big shoes to fill, and plenty of time to plan for it: the changeover is still more than a year away.
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