His elegant conducting style, searching musical intellect and inspirational music-making have prompted guest invitations from orchestras such as the DSO Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Toronto Symphony and many of the leading British orchestras including the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, Halle Orchestra and City of Birmingham Symphony; also with chamber orchestras such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, Les Siecles and Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
Collon and his Aurora Orchestra have been an annual fixture at the BBC Proms since 2010, hugely popular for their staged and memorised performances - and are one of the few orchestras to appear live in the Proms’ truncated 2020 season. They have also become regular visitors to leading European venues such as the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Cologne Philharmonie, also touring to the Bremen, Rheingau and Gstaad festivals. Aurora Orchestra is Resident Orchestra at Kings Place and Associate Orchestra at the Southbank, where they have reinvented the concert format with their ‘Orchestral Theatre’ Series.
In August 2020 Deutsche Grammophon released Aurora’s Music of the Spheres recording of Mozart, Ades and Max Richter. This followed two critically acclaimed recordings for Warner Classics: Road Trip featuring music by Ives, Copland, Adams and Nico Muhly (winning the prestigious 2015 Echo Klassik Award for ‘Klassik Ohne Grenzen’) and Insomnia with music by Britten, Brett Dean, Ligeti, Gurney and Lennon & McCartney. He has also recorded Haydn and Ligeti with the Danish Radio Symphony, Britten and Delius with the Philharmonia, and several discs of contemporary repertoire with the Hallé Orchestra. He has conducted over 200 new works, including the UK or world premieres of works by Unsuk Chin, Phillip Glass, Colin Matthews, Nico Muhly, Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Judith Weir, and this season features works by Thomas Ades and Brett Dean.
Opera productions have included Peter Grimes and Don Giovanni for Oper Koeln, Magic Flute at English National Opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream at Welsh National Opera, Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne Touring Opera, and Turn of the Screw at the Aldeburgh Festival with Aurora Orchestra.
Born in London, Nicholas is a violist, pianist and organist by training, and studied as Organ Scholar at Clare College, Cambridge.
2020/21 season / 423 words. Not to be altered without permission.