New York Philharmonic receives $40 million gift

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The New York Philharmonic announces that Oscar L. Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang have made a gift of $40 million that will further expand the Orchestra’s future programming and engagement with New York’s diverse communities and the international music world.

The gift is the largest-ever single contribution to the NY Phil’s endowment and will establish The Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang music and artistic director chair. The chair will be endowed commencing in 2025, when Gustavo Dudamel becomes the NY Phil’s music director designate. Dudamel becomes music and artistic director in the 2026–27 season.

’Oscar and Agnes are visionary leaders, setting a new standard in empowering the arts and enriching New York City,’ said Gary Ginstling, Philharmonic president and CEO. ’Their extraordinary gift will help the NY Phil and Gustavo Dudamel reimagine what a 21st-century orchestra can be and ensure that the Philharmonic’s music-making will serve future generations. All of us at the New York Philharmonic are inspired by their belief in our aspirations.’

Dudamel is widely known for his ability to universally communicate his deep love of music and his long-standing commitment to music education as a force for social change. The Tangs’ $40 million gift to create the chair as Gustavo Dudamel begins his tenure reflects their support of these aspirations for the New York Philharmonic.

Oscar Tang has served as co-chairman of the New York Philharmonic board of directors, along with Peter W. May, since 2019, after joining the board in 2013. He and his wife, Agnes, have previously supported Philharmonic initiatives, including the launch of current music director Jaap van Zweden’s arrival with the New York Philharmonic, the Project 19 women’s commissioning initiative, and the renovation of David Geffen Hall.

A longtime New Yorker who began his career on Wall Street in 1962, Oscar L. Tang remarks, ’We want this gift to galvanise others to join in the transformation of the New York Philharmonic to return to the level of historical prominence and popularity it enjoyed when I first came to New York — the Golden Age under the baton of Maestro Leonard Bernstein.’

Oscar and Agnes Hsu-Tang further state: ’This gift is a manifestation of our confidence in New York and the New York Philharmonic’s new leaders, the visionary maestro Gustavo Dudamel and Gary Ginstling, the institution’s dynamic new president and CEO. We believe their leadership, building on progress achieved in the past six years, will take the New York Philharmonic into a new Golden Age and make this institution a contemporary ideal of universality and excellence through broadened outreach and inclusive practice in every aspect of the institution.’

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