Cerddorfa Aurora Orchestra

Nicholas Collon / Conductor

Founded in 2004, Aurora Orchestra has received critical acclaim for its innovative programmes and adventurous music-making. Formed from a core of 15 principal players, Aurora combines a string quintet with a wind quintet, brass soloists, percussion and keyboard. The result is a flexible ensemble which has been championing the wonderful and varied repertoire of the 20th century alongside intimate performances of well-known masterpieces and revealing arrangements of large-scale symphonic works.

In November 2005, Aurora gave five performances of Stravinsky's Apollo with the Michael Clark Dance Company as part of the Barbican Young Genius Series. In April 2006 the orchestra was invited to take part in a residency at Aldeburgh and made its debut at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2006, with Ligeti's Chamber Concerto and Mahler's Symphony No.4 (arr. Stein), featuring the soprano soloist, Kate Royal.

In 2007 it was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship at the Royal Academy of Music for two years, during which it has performed a critically-acclaimed series of concerts, featuring repertoire including works by Birtwistle, Franz Schreker, John Adams, and commissions by Nico Muhly and Chris Willis.

'A typically imaginative and challenging programme from the brilliant young Aurora Orchestra under their talented Principal Conductor, Nicholas Collon.'

Evening Standard, March 2007

Other recent engagements have included concerts in the Spitalfields Festivals, the Al Bustan Festival, Lebanon, the Rye Festival, and a CD of clarinet concertos with David Campbell.

'edgy, adventurous, elite....the future of music' – Evening Standard .

‘It's been a remarkable success story. Founded just a little over three years ago, the Aurora Orchestra has already reached the threshold of big-name status, under the current conductor - name-to-watch firecracker Nicholas Collon.'

Metro, January 2008

More information is available on www.auroraorchestra.com

Nicholas Collon / Conductor

Nicholas Collon is the Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra, and works regularly with a wide range of orchestras and choirs across London. He has recently been awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship 2008 for conducting, from a list of twenty nominated conductors. A violist, pianist and organist by training, Nicholas studied music as an organ scholar at Clare College, Cambridge, graduating in 2004. Whilst at Cambridge, he conducted a critically acclaimed performance of Bach's ‘ St Matthew Passion' with the Cambridge University Baroque Ensemble, in which Anthony Rolfe Johnson sang the Evangelist role. Conducting engagements in London have included concerts with the Haydn, Hertfordshire, Tallis and Kensington Chamber Orchestras, the Salomon Orchestra, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra and masterclasses with the BBC Singers.

As Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra he has explored a wide variety of repertoire, including the Chamber Symphonies of John Adams, Schoenberg and Schreker, Birtwistle's ‘ Secret Theatre,' Strauss's ‘ Metamorphosen' , and Ligeti's Chamber Concerto with which he made his debut at the Aldeburgh Festival in June 2006.

Equally at home in the world of opera, Nicholas has conducted Britten's ‘ The Turn of the Screw' with the Cambridge University Opera Society, and was recently Musical Director for six performances of Britten's ‘ Curlew River ' with Mahogany Opera in a UK tour. In April 2007, he conducted the first ever staged opera (‘The Magic Flute', directed by Sam West) in the West Bank, appearing in Ramallah and Bethlehem. In July 2007 he was Assistant Conductor for ‘Paul Bunyan' with the Bregenz Festspiele, and in August 2007 he conducted an opera gala with the Amman Symphony Orchestra, Jordan. Future operatic engagements include Walton's ‘The Bear' and Stravinsky's ‘Renard' with Mahogany Opera in April 2008, Krenek's ‘Karl V' in the Bregenzer Festspiele (2008) and Szymanowski's ‘King Roger,' (assisting Mark Elder in 2009), also in the Bregenzer Festspiele.

Other work for the 2008/9 season includes Shostakovich's 4 th Symphony with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, the ‘Rite of Spring' with the Salomon Orchestra, Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde' with Aurora Orchestra in the Aldeburgh Festival and a concert with the Symphonieorchestrer Voralberg.