Young American conductor Andrew Grams has served as the Resident Conductor of the Florida Orchestra and completed his three-year term as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra in 2007. He was appointed to that post by Franz Welser-Möst in June, 2004.

As one of America’s most promising and talented young conductors, Mr. Grams has already made debut appearances with many of the great orchestras of the world including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome and the orchestras of Baltimore, Dallas, Houston and others.

Mr. Grams made his first subscription series appearance with the Cleveland Orchestra in May, 2006 conducting Schoenberg’s Second Chamber Symphony and conducted his first series of full-length subscription concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra in November, 2006. He led programs with the orchestra at the Blossom Music Center in 2006 and 2007 as well as at the new Miami Performing Arts Center in the winter of 2006-07.

Last season brought debuts for Mr. Grams with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Utah Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, the Edmonton Symphony, the Melbourne Symphony, and the Hamburg Symphony among others and he returned to conduct the Cleveland Orchestra as well a performance of Balanchine masterpieces with the Miami City Ballet.

In 2002, Grams was appointed the assistant conductor of the Reading Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania and returned to conduct that orchestra again in 2005. He was selected to spend the summer of 2003 studying with David Zinman, Murry Sidlin and Michael Stern at the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival, and returned to that program again in 2004.

A Maryland native raised in Severn, Andrew Grams began conducting at the age of 17 when he directed the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen Arts Camp in Michigan. In 1999 he received a bachelor of music degree in violin performance from The Juilliard School, where he was a student of Stephen Clapp, and in 2003 he received a conducting degree from The Curtis Institute of Music, where he worked with Otto-Werner Mueller. Also an accomplished violinist, Mr. Grams was a member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra at Lincoln Center from 1998 to 2004, serving as acting associate principal second violin in 2002 and 2004. In addition, he has performed with ensembles including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the New Jersey Symphony.