Nicholas Collon

• Conductor

About

Nicholas Collon is establishing an enviable reputation as a commanding and inspirational interpreter in an exceptionally wide range of music. As Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra he has promoted imaginative programming that integrates challenging repertoire from the 20th and 21st centuries with masterworks of the Classical and Romantic eras.
In addition to his work with Aurora he regularly conducts other ensembles in London and is increasingly heard outside the UK. A viola player, pianist and organist by training, Nicholas studied at Clare College, Cambridge. He was awarded the 2008 Arts Foundation Fellowship for conducting, having been chosen from a list of twenty nominated British conductors.
With Aurora Nicholas has explored a wide variety of repertoire, including the chamber symphonies of John Adams, Schoenberg and Schreker, Birtwistle’s Secret Theatre and Strauss’s Metamorphosen. Together they performed Ligeti's Chamber Concerto to great acclaim at the Aldeburgh Festival and recently returned there with Schoenberg’s Erwartung to open the new Hoffmann Building. He has also appeared with Aurora in the Spitalfields and Barbican Young Genius Festivals, at the BBC Proms as part of the Young Composers’ Competition, at LSO St Luke’s and at the Al Bustan Festival, Lebanon.
Other recent concert work includes the chamber version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Orchestra of Opera North, a programme of Schumann, Piazzolla and Stravinsky with Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg, Shostakovich Symphony No 4 with the Kensington Symphony and Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique with the Salomon Orchestra.