The London-born conductor Kevin Griffiths has been appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Collegium Musicum Basel. As founder and principal conductor of the London Steve Reich Ensemble, Griffiths has won international recognition for his commitment to contemporary music. The Ensemble performs at home and abroad and won the acclaimed Diapason d’Or award for its debut CD on the CPO label. Their second Disc recorded for EMI Classics was released in September 2011 and has already received positiv reviews.
Kevin Griffiths won the 2nd Prize at the International Sir Georg Solti Competition in 2010 and was attached to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London thanks to the ‘Melgaard Young Conductor’ scheme for the Season 2010/11. During one year with this worldwide leading orchestra on period instruments, Kevin has worked with Vladimir Jurowski, Trevor Pinnock and Sir Simon Rattle. He has conducted the orchestra in concert performing excerpts from Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
It was after completing his violin studies with Adelina Oprean, Igor Ozim and Giuliano Carmignola that Kevin Griffiths turned to conducting. His studies with David Zinman and Colin Metters had a major impact on his further development. Zinman awarded him a fellowship for the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2004 and 2005, while Metters taught him on the Postgraduate Conducting Course at the Royal Academy of Music. Kevin has also worked and participated in master classes with conductors such as Sir Colin Davis, Jorma Panula, Lothar Zagrosek, George Hurst and Yan Pascal Tortelier.
In 2007, Kevin was awarded a hotly contested two-year post as Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music. During this period he studied with Sir Mark Elder, Mark Shanahan and Clark Rundell and conducted opera productions including Ravel’s double bill L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges, plus Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss.
Kevin has conducted numerous orchestras including the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Symphony Orchestra Biel/Bienne, the Frankfurt am Main Opera und Museum Orchestra, the Badische Staatskapelle, the Brandenburg State Symphony Orchestra, the Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Artists with whom Kevin Griffiths has worked include Sir James Galway, Isabelle van Keulen, Alexander Rudin, Ricardo Castro, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Ingulf Turban, Peter Bruns, Gavriel Lipkind and soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic (Stefan Dohr, Wenzel Fuchs, Jonathan Kelly, Markus Weidmann).
Kevin has conducted Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Musique Cordiale Festival in southern France. Past performances with the Pocket Opera Company in Zurich included Offenbach’s Barbe-Bleue and the Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan. Kevin has furthermore conducted the world premières of works by Rodolphe Schacher and Elena Firsova and has given the British première of a work by Steven Mackey. In addition, Kevin Griffiths is dedicated to making classical music accessible for children and young people. His concerts in which he both conducts and gives a spoken commentary have enjoyed great success with the public.
This season Kevin Griffiths will also be working with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the Jenaer Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Badische Staatskapelle has also re-invited him to condcuct Opera at the “Handel Festspiele”.