Currently in his fifteenth season as Music Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, Neal Gittleman has led the orchestra to new levels of artistic achievement and increasing renown throughout the country. During Gittleman's tenure, the orchestra has received five ASCAP awards from the American Symphony Orchestra League for its commitment to contemporary music. In March of 2003, the DPO moved into the Mead Theatre of the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in downtown Dayton, one of the country's finest new concert venues.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Neal Gittleman graduated from Yale University in 1975. He continued his musical studies with the eminent teachers Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonné in Paris, Hugh Ross at the Manhattan School of Music and Charles Bruck at both the Pierre Monteux School and the Hartt School of Music, where he was the recipient of the Karl Böhm Fellowship. In 1984, he was the Second Prize Winner of Geneva's Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition, and, two years later, he was awarded Third Prize at the Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York City. In 1989, he was selected for the American Conductors Program at the American Symphony Orchestra League's annual conference in San Francisco.

Neal Gittleman has served as Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra (under the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program) and as Associate Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. He was also the Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for three seasons, preceded by six years of service as its Associate Conductor. He has appeared with numerous orchestras, including l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Chicago, Indianapolis, Oregon, New Jersey, Phoenix, Saint Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco and Seattle Symphonies, the Minnesota, Philadelphia and National Repertory Orchestras and the Buffalo and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras. Internationally, he has conducted Canada's Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra London, Mexico City's Orquesta Filamónica de la Ciudad de México, UNAM Philharmonic and Orquesta Cámara Bellas Artes, Bosnia's Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra and Germany's Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and led performances of Handel's Messiah in Tokyo and Osaka.

Neal Gittleman conducts on three CD recordings: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F with Norman Krieger and the Prague National Symphony (Artisie 4 Records); the Piano Concertos of Tomas Svoboda with Norman Krieger, Tomas Svoboda, and the Dayton Philharmonic (Artisie 4 Records); and A Celebration of Flight, new works by William Bolcom, Steven Winteregg, Michael Schelle, and Robert Xavier Rodríguez performed by the Dayton Philharmonic (Albany Records).

When not on the podium, Neal is an avid player of squash, golf, and t'ai chi ch'uan. He and his wife, Lisa Fry, have lived in Dayton since 1997.