Zubin Mehta

Zubin Mehta fascinates me as a genuinely borderless figure. Born in Mumbai to a father who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra, he rose to lead the Los Angeles and Israel philharmonics and collected honors from Israel to Germany to Japan's Praemium Imperiale. For an Indian conductor to reach the summit of Western classical music was no easy road, and he did it with sheer authority on the podium. What moves me is how his whole career argues that music genuinely transcends borders. I regard him as one of the great unifying conductors of the modern age, and a quietly heroic one.

Name (English)

Zubin Mehta

Name (Japanese)

ズービン・メータ

Reading

ずーびん・めーた

Born

April 29, 1936 (age 90)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Rat

Origin

Mumbai, Bombay State, India

Occupation

conductor / double-bassist

University

St. Xavier's College

Awards & achievements

• 1991 Israel Prize
• Bavarian Order of Merit
• 2010 Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the State of Vienna
• Great Silver Medal of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
• Padma Bhushan
• 2008 Praemium Imperiale
• 2008 Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art

• Official sitehttps://www.zubinmehta.net/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zubin%20Mehta
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%93%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%A1%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q157635

Tags

• Bombay State
• conductor
• double-bassist

Last updated

2026-06-18

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.