Artists

Biography:

André de Ridder occupies a unique position amongst today’s conductors. His stylistic versatility from baroque to contemporary music, his projects and collaborations make him much in demand by the BBC Proms, the Holland, Sydney and Manchester International Festivals, and orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, Ensemble Intercontemporain and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He is Artistic Director of Musica Nova Helsinki, and in 2018 he received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his work as Artistic Curator of London’s Spitalfields Festival.

In the 19/20 season, de Ridder will return to such orchestras as Chicago and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras and Orchestre de Paris, and notable debuts will include Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He furthermore continues established collaborations with Damon Albarn and with Max Richter. In collaboration with the Southbank Centre, he launches a series of genre-defying concerts, ‘Unclassified Live’, based on the Radio 3 programme, and co-curated and presented by the programme’s presenter Elizabeth Alker.

The ‘livewire conductor’ (The Times, 2017) is equally active in the field of opera and music theatre, forming close relationships with some of the most prominent opera composers of our time, including Kaija Saariaho, Daníel Bjarnason, Michel van der Aa, and also performing repertoire works such as The Magic Flute, Bluebeard’s Castle and Nixon in China. In recent seasons, he has therefore worked with directors such as Kasper Holten, Barrie Kosky, Peter Sellars, Marco Štorman and Enda Walsh, and appeared at houses such as Staatstheater Stuttgart, Finnish National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Irish National Opera and Den Jyske Opera. He begins the current season leading a multimedia Bluebeard’s Castle project with the Philharmonia Orchestra alongside Punchdrunk Theatre Company, and is reinvited to Staatsoper Stuttgart for two projects in the 20/21 season.

In 2013, he founded s t a r g a z e, performing projects ranging from Bach to Beethoven to avant-garde electronics, and contemporary classical music. The group have gained a significant following, and are regularly invited by leading concert halls, including the Barbican Centre London, the Kölner Philharmonie and Philharmonie de Paris, plus Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In 2020, they present ‘(not) Another Beethoven Cycle’, a re-examination of all of Beethoven’s symphonies, commissioning a host of artists from a diverse range of disciplines to ‘respond’ to each symphony.

De Ridder’s discography also includes the hugely successful Four Seasons Recomposed by Max Richter (DG) and an album of orchestral music by Bryce Dessner and Jonny Greenwood (DG). The Max Richter recording was awarded an ECHO Klassik ‘Classic Without Borders’ award 2013. De Ridder was also credited as producer on the release of Africa Express Presents: In C Mali, on Transgressive Records. This followed a trip to Bamako, Mali, with Damon Albarn and his Africa Express project. In Mali, de Ridder initiated and led a recording of Riley’s In C with local musicians, joined by travelling western artists including Brian Eno and Damon Albarn.