Since becoming the BSO's music director in 1973 he has devoted himself to the orchestra for more than a quarter-century, the longest tenure of any music director currently active with a major orchestra, and paralleled in BSO history only by the twenty-five-year tenure of the legendary Serge Koussevitzky, which Mr. Ozawa has now surpassed. In recent years, numerous honors and achievements have underscored Mr. Ozawa's standing on the international music scene. Most recently, this past December, Mr. Ozawa was named a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by French President Jacques Chirac, recognizing not only his work as a conductor, but also his support of French composers, his devotion to the French public, and his work at the Paris Opera. In December 1997 he was named "Musician of the Year" by Musical America.

In February 1998, fulfilling a longtime ambition of joining musicians across the globe, he closed the Opening Ceremonies at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, leading the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with performers including six choruses – in Japan, Australia, China, Germany, South Africa, and the United States – linked by satellite. In 1994 he became the first recipient of Japan's Inouye Sho (the "Inouye Award," named after this century's preeminent Japanese novelist) recognizing lifetime achievement in the arts. 1994 also saw the inauguration of the new Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the BSO's summer home in western Massachusetts. At Tanglewood he has also played a key role as both teacher and administrator in the activities of the Tanglewood Music Center, the BSO's summer training academy for young professional musicians from all over the world.

In 1992 Mr. Ozawa co-founded the renowned Saito Kinen Festival – which he has brought to international prominence – in Matsumoto, Japan, in memory of his teacher at Tokyo's Toho School of Music, Hideo Saito, a central figure in the cultivation of Western music and musical technique in Japan. Also in 1992 he made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Besides his concerts throughout the year with the Boston Symphony, he conducts the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic on a regular basis, and appears also with the New Japan Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Orchestre National de France, La Scala in Milan and the Vienna Staatsoper. Besides his many Boston Symphony recordings, he has recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Saito Kinen Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestre de Paris, the Philharmonia of London, the San Francisco Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, and the Toronto Symphony, among others.

All of this has been in addition to his continuing work as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Throughout his twenty-six years in that position, Mr. Ozawa has maintained the orchestra's distinguished reputation both at home and abroad, with concerts at Symphony Hall, at Tanglewood, on tours to Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, China, and South America, and across the United States; concerts in Paris and Cologne are scheduled for May 2000. He has upheld the BSO's commitment to new music through the frequent commissioning of new works, including a series of centennial commissions marking the orchestra's hundredth birthday in 1981 and a series of works celebrating the Tanglewood Music Center's fiftieth anniversary in 1990. Last season, he gave the world premiere of Henri Dutilleux’s "The shadows of time," a BSO commission which was subsequently recorded by Erato for European release and honored at this year’s French recording awards, "Les Victoires de la Musique Classique." In addition, he and the orchestra have recorded more than 140 works, representing more than fifty different composers, on ten labels. Mr. Ozawa won his first Emmy award in 1976, for the BSO’s PBS television series "Evening at Symphony." He received his second Emmy in September 1994, for Individual Achievement in Cultural Programming, for "Dvorák in Prague: A Celebration," with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a concert subsequently released by Sony Classical in both audio and video formats. Mr. Ozawa holds honorary doctor of music degrees from the University of Massachusetts, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. Born in 1935 in Shenyang, China, Seiji Ozawa studied music from an early age and later graduated with first prizes in composition and conducting from Tokyo's Toho School of Music. In 1959 he won first prize at the International Competition of Orchestra Conductors held in Besançon, France. Charles Munch, then music director of the Boston Symphony, subsequently invited him to attend the Tanglewood Music Center, where he won the Koussevitzky Prize for outstanding student conductor in 1960. While working with Herbert von Karajan in West Berlin, Mr. Ozawa came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic for the 1961-62 season. He made his first professional concert appearance in North America in January 1962, with the San Francisco Symphony. He was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Ravinia Festival for five summers beginning in 1964, music director of the Toronto Symphony from 1965 to 1969, and music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1970 to 1976, followed by a year as that orchestra's music adviser. He conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the first time in 1964, at Tanglewood, and made his first Symphony Hall appearance with the orchestra in January 1968. He became an artistic director of Tanglewood in 1970 and began his tenure as music director of the BSO in 1973, following a year as music adviser. Today, some 80 % of the BSO's members have been appointed by Seiji Ozawa. The Boston Symphony itself stands as eloquent testimony not only to his work in Boston, but to Mr. Ozawa's lifetime achievement in music.

Mr. Ozawa's compact discs with the Boston Symphony Orchestra include, on Philips, the complete cycle of Mahler symphonies, Richard Strauss's Elektra, Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and complete Miraculous Mandarin, and, most recently, an album with soprano Sylvia McNair featuring Ravel’s Shéhérazade and also including music of Britten and Debussy. Among his EMI recordings is the Grammy-winning "American Album" with Itzhak Perlman, including music for violin and orchestra by Bernstein, Barber, and Lukas Foss. Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon include Mendelssohn's complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, violin concertos of Bartók and Moret with Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Liszt's piano concertos with Krystian Zimerman. Other recordings include Fauré's Requiem, Berlioz's Requiem, Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto with Evgeny Kissin, and Tchaikovsky's opera Pique Dame, on RCA Victor Red Seal; music for piano left-hand and orchestra by Ravel, Prokofiev, and Britten with Leon Fleisher, and Strauss's Don Quixote with Yo-Yo Ma, on Sony Classical; and Beethoven's five piano concertos and Choral Fantasy with Rudolf Serkin, on Telarc.