Lawrence Foster

Lawrence Foster (born October 23, 1941) is an American conductor of Romanian ancestry.

Foster was born in Los Angeles, California, to Jewish-Romanian parents. His father died when Foster was three years old. He was later adopted by his stepfather, from whom he took the surname Foster.

Foster studied conducting with German conductor Fritz Zweig and piano with Joanna Grauden, both in Los Angeles. His other teachers and mentors have included: Karl Böhm, Bruno Walter, Henry Lewis, and Franz Waxman.

Foster became the conductor of the San Francisco Ballet at the age of 18, and served as assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. He was awarded the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize at Tanglewood in 1966. In 1969 he was named chief guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. He has held music directorships with the Houston Symphony, the Ojai Music Festival, the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia, among others.

In 1990, Foster was appointed music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School.