LOS ANGELES — Patrick Flynn, the music director of the Riverside County Philharmonic for 19 years who also guest-conducted ballet, opera and classical orchestras around the world, has died. He was 72.

Flynn died Sept. 10 of a pulmonary embolism at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Jacqueline Porter, a former wife who remained a close friend. He had been a resident of Los Angeles.

“For most of his life Patrick brought beautiful symphonic music to thousands of music lovers around the world,” James Henderson, president of the Riverside County Philharmonic board of directors, said in a statement on the orchestra’s Web site. This season the orchestra will be led by guest conductors until a new music director is named.

Flynn began his music career in Sydney, Australia, in the late 1960s, working as a composer and conductor. He wrote scores for Australian films including “Mad Dog Morgan” (1976) with Dennis Hopper as a ranger in the 1860s. He also wrote a rock opera, “Ned Kelly,” based on the life of a famous Australian outlaw. It premiered in Sydney in 1978.

Starting in the late 1960s, Flynn conducted a number of Australian productions of Broadway musicals including “Hair” and was a frequent guest conductor with the Australian Opera in Sydney. He worked with internationally known opera singers Dame Joan Sutherland and Kiri Te Kanawa among others.

Flynn moved to New York in the late 1970s and was a staff conductor with the American Ballet Theatre for two years. He continued to build a career as a guest conductor working with top-flight orchestras. He led performances by the BBC Orchestra in London, the Paris Opera and Finnish National Opera, among others. For several years he was a principal guest conductor for the North Carolina Symphony in Raleigh.

In the 1980s Flynn wrote orchestrations and incidental music for several full-length productions of the American Ballet Theatre including “Don Quixote,” created by Mikhail Baryshnikov.