Mervon Mehta

Mervon Mehta’s career in the arts has seen him on both sides of the curtain. A student of the late Sanford Meisner, Mehta has performed as an actor in over 100 theatrical productions, including residencies at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, and two seasons at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He was a founding member of the Neighborhood Group Theatre in New York City, and has appeared on the stages of the Court, Steppenwolf, and Apple Tree theatres in Chicago. He has made several appearances on television and in films.

In 1994, Mehta put his theatrical career on ‘temporary’ hold and joined the Ravinia Festival in Chicago as programmer for their pop concert series. In 1998, he became Director of Programming and added the title of Director of Production in 2001. During his tenure, Ravinia hosted 120 concerts each summer, including 20 concerts by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and presented an international roster of classical, jazz, world music, country, pop, and music theatre artists.

In February of 2002, Mehta was named the first Vice President of Programming and Education at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Under his leadership, the Kimmel Center brought an array of talent across many genres of music to Philadelphia. Diverse artists such as Caetano Veloso, Mariza, and Ravi Shankar; great orchestras from Berlin, Vienna, Boston, Chicago, and New York; recitals by Lang Lang, Yo-Yo Ma, and Renée Fleming; the Alvin Ailey, Garth Fagan, and Urban Tap dance companies; and jazz artists including Oscar Peterson, Ornette Coleman, Wynton Marsalis, and a six-year, 30-concert relationship with Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez.

Since April of 2009, Mehta has been the Executive Director of Performing Arts for The Royal Conservatory. He oversaw the launch of Koerner Hall and is responsible for programming Koerner Hall’s successful series of classical, jazz, world music, and pop concerts, as well as overseeing all of the other performances and events throughout The Conservatory’s home at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning.

He has served the arts community in various capacities, including acting as co-chair of the International Society of Performing Arts Congress in Toronto; as a juror for the Juno Awards and the OSM Concours; and as a grant adjudicator for the City of Toronto, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. He also serves on the board of Intercultural Journeys in Philadelphia and is a member of the Toronto Music Advisory Committee.

Mehta still appears on stage frequently as a narrator of orchestral works. He has performed with top orchestras in Munich, Monte Carlo, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Chicago, Houston, Budapest, and Lisbon; and at the Festival de Radio France and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, under the batons of Christoph Eschenbach, Lawrence Foster, and Zubin Mehta.