Born to an artistic family, Israeli-American conductor Yoel Gamzou has distinguished himself as a Mahler specialist amongst scholars and musicians alike. Having started his musical education with the cello, Yoel committed himself to orchestral conducting at the age of 12, later to officially start his conducting studies at 14.

Having commenced his formal education in Israel at the Tel Aviv University, Yoel went on to study in New York, Paris and Milan, working with some of the greatest conductors of our time, among them Winston Dan Vogel, Jorma Panula, Jean Fournet, Piero Bellugi and others. Most notably,
Yoel’s main mentor was the late Carlo Maria Giulini, with whom he worked intensively until Giulini's
death and was his last student.

In April 2007, Yoel was awarded the Special Prize in the prestigious 2nd International Gustav Mahler conducting competition in Bamberg, Germany. As a result, Yoel was invited to record a radio-production of Brahms's Tragic Overture and Furtwaengler's Overture op. 3 with the Bamberger Symphoniker, for the “Bayerische Rundfunk”.

In December 2006, Yoel founded the International Mahler Orchestra and has been its Artistic Director and Principal Conductor since. The orchestra regularly performs across Europe and some of the landmarks of its first four seasons include a celebrated concert in memory of Carlo Maria Giulini in London with Guy Braunstein, concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker (who is closely
associated with the IMO), the inauguration of the newly refurbished Teatro Nuovo in Spoleto (in
collaboration with Marina Mahler, granddaughter of the composer and honorary president of the IMO),
a special concert in Paris's Salle Gaveau in February 2008, a tribute concert with the legendary
violinist Ivry Gitlis in Porto, Portugal (May 2009) and a series of highly successful concert in the IMO’s
new home, the Berliner Philharmonie. In April 2010, the IMO will embark on a special collaboration
project with “PODIUM Festival Esslingen”, where IMO members will join festival soloists for the creation
of “Festival Strings” – a string orchestra which will play throughout the festival under Yoel’s direction.
In 2009 the IMO made its first studio recording with the renowned sound engineer Christian Feldgen
featuring works of Mahler and Brahms – the CD will be released in the season 2010-2011.

Since 2004, Yoel has been preparing a new complete-version of Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony (realization of the drafts), supported by the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, Wien and several independent scholars. The complete version will be premiered by the International Mahler Orchestra in Berlin under the auspices of the “Jüdische Kulturtage” Festival on the event of the televised final concert, which shall take place in the Rykestrasse Synagogue in Berlin – the first symphony concert in a German synagogue since the 2nd World War – on September 5th 2010. The IMO and Yoel are this year’s festival’s “Artists in Residence”.

Yoel has completed numerous arrangements of Mahler's works - amongst which, the Adagio from Symphony No. 9, arranged for chamber orchestra, the five "Rückert-Lieder", arranged for Viola (or clarinet) and Piano as well as chamber ensemble with mezzo-sopran (premiered by Lioba Braun in the Rolandseck Festival), the “Adagietto from Symphony No. 5” arranged for Violin and Piano, the “Serenade-Nachtmusik from Symphony No. 7”, one version for chamber orchestra and one for a chamber-ensemble (premiered to high acclaim at the Rolandseck Festival in July 2008 by Guy Braunstein and members of the Berlin Philharmonic) and many others. Further arrangements include four operatic-fantasies for Flute and Orchestra, commissioned by Emmanuel Pahud and recorded by him and the Rotterdam Philharmonic for EMI, an orchestral suite of Verdi’s Requiem (in memoriam Carlo Maria Giulini, and including a special cello-aria dedicated to Emanuel Graf), an arrangement of the 3 Piano Preludes of Gershwin for string orchestra and an arrangement of Debussy’s “Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un Faune” into a “Flute-Fantasy” for Flute and chamber orchestra, premiered by Emmanuel Pahud and the IMO in Berlin in 2009. Other arrangements include many string-orchestra arrangements of chamber works and numerous orchestrations of Beatles songs.

Yoel has been supported by numerous organizations and private individuals, amongst which the Bischoffsheim-Guy Patin Foundation, Zfunot Tarbut, Yossi Hackmey and the Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Fund. Yoel has worked with many different orchestras in Germany, France, Italy, England, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Cuba and the US, amongst which, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Hamburger Symphoniker, the Neue Philharmonie Frankfurt, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba, the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and the Khmelnitzkiy Symphony Orchestra in Ukraine.

In March 2010, after a successful project as guest-conductor, Yoel was appointed Principal Conductor of the “Neue Philharmonie München” (ex-Ensemble Interculturrel), starting from Summer 2010.