$40 million new gift from Oscar L. Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang to Philharmonics

Incoming music director Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the New York Philharmonic at its spring gala the orchestra said Tuesday as it announced a $40 million gift from co-chairman Oscar L. Tang and wife Agnes Hsu-Tang that will endow his position.

Dudamel was hired in February to become the Philharmonic’s music director for the 2026-27 season. He conducted the orchestra last May in three performances of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony but was not scheduled to lead it in the 2023-24 season, which opens Sept. 27. The program of Dudamel’s concert was not announced.

As part of the gift, the music director will become The Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music and Artistic Director Chair starting with the 2025-26 season, when Dudamel becomes music director designate.

The 42-year-old Dudamel has been music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009, a tenure that will end after 17 seasons when he starts in New York. He quit as music director of the Paris Opéra in May, two seasons into a six-year contract scheduled to run through the 2026-27 season.

New York Philharmonic Co-Chairman Oscar L. Tang has supported institutions that promote excellence in education, arts, culture, athletics, and the advancement of social justice. Mr. Tang was part of the Lincoln Center–New York Philharmonic team that led the historic renovation of David Geffen Hall. For nearly 30 years Mr. Tang has been a trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has endowed the new wing for modern and contemporary art. He serves the boards of the Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts and the USA Bobsled / Skeleton Foundation. In 1989 Mr. Tang co-founded the Committee of 100 with Yo-Yo Ma, I.M. Pei, and others to advance US-China relations and Chinese American inclusion.

In 1990 Mr. Tang was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities; he later served on the New York State Council on the Arts from 2002 to 2004 at the appointment of Governor George Pataki. Mr. Tang was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.

A graduate of Phillips Academy Andover, Oscar Tang served on the academy’s board of trustees from 1995 to 2012, and as its president from 2004 to 2012. Under his leadership Andover became the first American preparatory school to go “need blind.” He attended Yale University and Harvard Business School, and has founded centers of academic excellence at Andover, Princeton, Columbia, University of California–Berkeley, and Oxford. Most recently, Mr. Tang and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, designated the Tang Academy for American Democracy at the New-York Historical Society.

Mr. Tang has been a private investor since 1993, when he retired from Reich & Tang, an asset management firm that he co-founded and served as president and CEO for 20 years.