Alan Gilbert extends stay with New York Philharmonic through 2017

Alan Gilbert has extended his contract as music director of the New York Philharmonic through the 2016-17 season, the orchestra announced on Wednesday. Gilbert assumed the post at the start of the 2009-10 season. His contract had been set to expire at the end of next season.

The announcement was made by the orchestra’s executive director, Matthew VanBesien, who recently took over from Zarin Mehta, and the orchestra’s chairman, Gary W. Parr.

Gilbert, 45, is the first native New Yorker to hold the position of music director of the New York Philharmonic. He has a familial history with the orchestra. His mother, Yoko, is a violinist with the orchestra; his father, Michael, also a violinist, retired from the orchestra in 2001.

The conductor succeeded Lorin Maazel as music director in 2009.

In May, Gilbert led the New York Philharmonic in its Walt Disney Concert Hall debut as part of a tour. Times music critic Mark Swed wrote at the time that Gilbert has “fought the good fight to delicately move the repertory of a conservative institution forward many decades and into the 21st century.”

Earlier this year, Glenn Dicterow, the orchestra’s long-serving concertmaster, said he is leaving at the end of next season and is joining the faculty at the University of Southern California.

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