Born in Poland, Gabriel Chmura grew up in Israel. He studied piano and composition at the Music Academy of Tel Aviv, then conducting with Pierre Dervaux in Paris, Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Franco Ferrara in Siena. After winning first prize in the Herbert von Karajan Competition in Berlin and the Guido Cantelli Competition in Milan in 1971, he embarked upon a series of international engagements. He has held appointments as Music Director of the opera house in Aachen (1974 – 83) and the Bochum Symphony Orchestra (1983 – 87), as well as the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa (1987 – 90), with which he undertook extensive tours in North America that included performances at Carnegie Hall in New York. As a guest conductor he has performed Otello and Carmen in Munich, Samson et Dalila in Barcelona and, in Paris, Werther at the Opéra and Le Coq d’or at the Théâtre musical du Châtelet. In 2001 Gabriel Chmura took up his appointment as Music Director of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, with which he has toured the UK, France, Germany, South America and Japan as well as appearing at the Prague Autumn festival.