Harding was born in Oxford He studied trumpet at Chethams School of Music and was a member of the National Youth Orchestra at age 13 At age 17 Harding assembled a group of musicians to perform Pierrot Lunaire of Arnold Schoenberg and sent a tape of the performance to Simon Rattle in Birmingham After listening to this tape Rattle hired Harding as an assistant to him at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for a year from 1993 to 1994 Harding then attended the University of Cambridge but after his first year at university Claudio Abbado named him his assistant with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra Harding first conducted the Berlin Philharmonic at age 21 At the time of his first conducting appearance at The Proms in 1996 he was then the youngestever conductor to appear there In 1997 Harding was the Music Director of the Ojai Music Festival alongside pianist Emanuel Ax Harding has been music director of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra 19972000 the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen 19992003 and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra 20032008 Harding now has the title of conductor laureate with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra He conducted the 2005 opening night at La Scala Milan in Idomeneo as a substitute after the resignation of Riccardo Muti earlier in 2005 In 2004 Harding was appointed principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra LSO as of 2006 One of his new projects with the LSO involved the Sound Adventures program for new compositions With the LSO he has conducted a commercial recording of the opera Billy Budd for EMI Classics He became the Principal Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2007 In September 2009 he extended his contract as the orchestras principal conductor through 2012 In April 2013 the orchestra further announced the extension of Hardings contract to 2015 With the orchestra he has recorded commercially for the Sony Classical label In June 2015 the Orchestre de Paris announced the appointment of Harding as its 9th principal conductor effective September 2016 Harding concluded his tenure in the Orchestre de Paris post following the close of the 20182019 season In October 2018 the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra announced the extension of Hardings contract as principal conductor through 2023 along with granting him the new title of konstnärlig ledare artistic leader
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