Uruguayan conductor Carlos Kalmar was born in Montevideo to Austrian parents, and started playing the violin at age six. When he was 15, his family moved back to Austria, and he attended the Vienna Academy of Music, studying under Karl Österreicher. In the United States, Kalmar has conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the New World Symphony. Internationally, Kalmar has led the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra, the Anhaltisches Theater Orchestra, and the Tonkünstlerorchester in Vienna, among many other orchestras. Kalmar is the music director of the Oregon Symphony, as well as the principal conductor and artistic director of the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.