Nicholas
Collon / Conductor - biography
Nicholas Collon is establishing an enviable reputation as a commanding
and inspirational interpreter in an exceptionally wide range of music. As founder
and Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra he has promoted imaginative programming
that integrates challenging repertoire from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
with masterworks of the Classical and Romantic eras. Nicholas and Aurora were
winners of the Ensemble Award at the 2011 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. In
addition to his work with Aurora, he is increasingly in demand as a guest conductor
with other ensembles in the UK and abroad. He was classical music nominee in the
Times Breakthrough Award at the 2011 Sky Arts South Bank Show Awards, winner of
the 2008 Arts Foundation Award for Conducting, and is Assistant Conductor to Vladimir
Jurowski at the London Philharmonic Orchestra for the 2011/12 season.
Having made a very successful debut at the BBC Proms last year, Nicholas
was re-invited to conduct both the London Sinfonietta and Aurora in the 2011 festival
in programmes ranging from Prokofiev and Stravinsky to Dutilleux and Sir Richard
Rodney Bennett. March 2010 saw the launch of New Moves, a unique cross-arts
residency at LSO St Luke's which has included critically acclaimed collaborations
with capoeira, film, theatre, tango, and literature. In addition, Aurora Orchestra
is resident orchestra at Kings Place, where it performed six concerts in the Mozart
Unwrapped series, featuring soloists such as Rosemary Joshua, and will feature
in the Brahms Unwrapped season in 2012. In addition, Aurora has made appearances
at many of the Uk's leading festivals, including the Aldeburgh, Cambridge and
City of London festivals, the Snape Proms and the Sounds New Festival, and in
2011 released to critical acclaim a CD on Decca (Seeing is Believing) featuring
the works of Nico Muhly.
Recent operatic highlights include The Knight Crew
by Julian Phillips at Glyndebourne (which featured in a major BBC Two series)
and tours of Elena Langer's The Lion's Face and Luke Bedford's Seven
Angels with the Opera Group (the latter with Birmingham Contemporary Music
Group) throughout the UK, and at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House. He has
conducted a programme of Walton's The Bear and Stravinsky's Renard
for Mahogany Opera, described by Opera magazine's critic as 'one of the most
electrifying evenings I've spent at the opera in recent seasons ... brilliant
playing [by] the Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, whose feel for
Stravinsky's Russian colourings were beyond reproach'. He also conducted Mozart's
The Magic Flute, directed by Sam West, in Ramallah and Bethlehem, the first-ever
staged opera production in the West Bank and subsequently returned a year later
with the same team for performances of Puccini's La Bohčme. In 2012/3 Nicholas
will make his debuts with Welsh National Opera (Jonathan Harvey Wagner Dream)
and English Touring Opera (Ullmann Der Kaiser von Atlantis).
Recent engagements include a joint collaboration with the London Sinfonietta
and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a London Symphony Orchestra UBS Soundscapes
Pioneers premiere, concerts with the Britten Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata, Sinfonia
ViVA and a debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's Ensemble 10/10. He has
also appeared at the Bregenz Festival with Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg in a
programme of works by Judith Weir and he has recorded works for broadcast with
the BBC Symphony and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestras.
This season, he makes his debuts with the London Philharmonic Orchestra,
Philharmonia Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Northern Sinfonia, the Münchener
Kammerorchester at the Munich Biennale, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá and the
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra,. With the London Sinfonietta Nicholas will conduct
works by George Benjamin and Ligeti at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and he will make
his concert debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
December
2011
Please
do not reprint this biography; updated
biographies are available at
http://www.icartists.co.uk/artists/nicholas-collon
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