Pratik Gandhi, Conductor

Pratik Gandhi is a conductor, percussionist, and clinician based in Toronto.

BIOGRAPHY

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PRATIK GANDHI

Pratik Gandhi (he/him/his) is a conductor, percussionist, clinician, and researcher based in Toronto. He currently serves as music director of the Rouge River Winds and sessional instructor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, where he directs the Wind Symphony. He was the founding music director of Soup Can Theatre and previously served as resident conductor for the Toy Piano Composers. Pratik is a doctoral student at York University, where his research, supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship, investigates issues of equity and representation among wind band composers in Canada.

Pratik has recently been selected as a finalist for music director positions with the Cathedral Bluffs Symphony Orchestra, the Oakville Symphony, the Northdale Concert Band, and the Wellington Wind Symphony. He also served as assistant conductor of Symphony on the Bay (now the Burlington Symphony Orchestra) for five years, and as associate conductor with the Toronto Youth Wind Orchestra for three years.

In frequent demand as a guest conductor and adjudicator across southwestern Ontario, Pratik serves as adjudicator and Vice-Chair for the concert band division of MusicFest Canada, as well as syllabus coordinator for the OBA Provincial Band Festival. He adjudicated concert bands at the 2017 Alberta International Band Festival in Calgary. Pratik regularly presents workshops on conducting techniques, wind repertoire, and percussion pedagogy. 

In prior seasons, Pratik has conducted performances of Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Brahms' Haydn Variations, and Sibelius' Third Symphony, as well as works by Bach, Chopin, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Mozetich, and Tchaikovsky, among others. He was awarded the Ontario Band Association’s Conducting Excellence Award for three consecutive years, from 2017 through 2019. In December 2013, he directed a semi-staged production of Hansel and Gretel with Symphony on the Bay, which was deemed "a musical and organizational triumph". He also served on faculty as conductor of the string orchestra, symphony orchestra, and faculty string orchestra at the International Music Camp in 2012.

Pratik’s conducting experience covers a wide variety of genres and repertoire. He has led orchestras in performances of symphonies, concertos, and overtures; he has served as music director for stage works including operas, musicals, and cabarets; and he has conducted chamber ensembles, wind bands, choirs, and many different collaborative projects. Collaborative music-making is one of Pratik’s passions, and he particularly enjoys directing works for multiple performing forces.

Pratik was the founding music director of Soup Can Theatre, and his work during his ten-year tenure with the company received rave reviews. In 2014, he composed a piece and commissioned three others for Soup Can's innovative co-production Circle Jerk; the music was called "gorgeous and wildly entertaining" and "phenomenal". Their 2013 production of Barber's A Hand of Bridge, for which Pratik served as both stage director and musical director, made "a powerful impression", and delivered "an abundance of emotion and meaning"; it was also nominated for Best Indie Production of 2013. Later that year, he directed the music for their hit Fringe show Love is a Poverty You Can Sell 2: Kisses for a Pfennig, in which the orchestra was said to have made the show "immediate and vibrant and lovely", and whose cast was named one of the festival's outstanding ensembles. His musical direction of their summer 2011 staging of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade was hailed as "top-notch", and “the strongest part of the production...just the right dramatic edge”. Most recently, Pratik arranged and directed the music for Soup Can’s widely acclaimed adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, set in Toronto’s historic Campbell House; according to one review, the music successfully served as “a barometer of the health of the scenes” of the show.

Pratik is also a champion of new music, and has conducted the premiere of numerous works, including Jodi Vander Woude’s Quiet you with my love: lullaby, for soprano solo, female chorus, and large orchestra, and Kristie Hunter's Stronger Than, for orchestra. In 2008, Pratik was selected to participate in the Windsor Symphony Orchestra’s conductor-composer workshop, premiering John Leigh, by Brenden Fraser. As part of Toronto's Cultural Hotspot initiative, Pratik led the Greater Toronto Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert in June 2015 that included new music by Frank Horvat and John W.N. Palmer. Under his leadership, the Rouge River Winds have helped to commission works from composers Steven Bryant, Pete Meechan, Cait Nishimura, Giovanni Santos, and Bill Thomas. With the Toy Piano Composers, Pratik has directed the premieres of works by Elisha Denburg, Alex Eddington, Joseph Glaser, August Murphy-King, Julia Mermelstein, Monica Pearce, Dr. Fiona Ryan, Bekah Simms, and Tyler Versluis, among others. Pratik is credited as conductor on three albums of contemporary music: Bekah Simms’ impurity chains (conducting two tracks, including the Juno-nominated “Granitic”); the Toy Piano Composers’ self-titled debut album; and the recent premiere recording of Benjamin Sajo’s “The Great War Sextet”.

Pratik received a B.Mus. in music education and an M.Mus. in conducting from the University of Western Ontario, where he studied conducting with Dr. Colleen Richardson, Jerome Summers and James McKay, and percussion with Dr. Jill Ball. He received numerous entrance and in-course scholarships and awards, including the Western Scholarship of Excellence, the London Music Scholarship Foundation Endowment Award, and the Silver Medal for Excellence in Leadership. During his graduate work at Western, he also founded and directed a string orchestra called Gli Archi, which presented two full-length concerts and recorded several new works for local composers including Anthony Aceti and Jeff Smallman.