Musicians of sinfonia ViVA
Nicholas Kok
Principal Guest Conductor
Nicholas Kok is an extremely versatile conductor and musician. In the concert hall, the opera house and on radio he has conducted numerous world and British premieres, including works by Birtwistle, Holt, Maxwell Davies, Reich, Turnage and Xenakis. From May 1996 until May 2006 he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of sinfonia ViVA, with which he performed an extremely large and varied repertoire. He was recently appointed the Orchestra's Principal Guest Conductor.
He was an organ scholar at New College, Oxford and also studied at the Royal College of Music where he won a Countess of Munster Award and the Lofthouse Memorial Prize.
He has worked frequently with English National Opera where he has conducted Orfeo, Il Ritorno d'Ulisse, The Fairy Queen, The Marriage of Figaro, Cosï fan tutte, King Priam, a double-bill of world premieres by Turnage - The Country of the Blind and Twice through the Heart - in a joint production with the South Bank and the Aldeburgh Festival, and the world premiere of Alec Roth and Vikram Seth's opera Arion and the Dolphin. He made his Opera North debut conducting the world premiere of Simon Holt's The Nightingale's to Blame at the Huddersfield Festival in 1998, where he also conducted the British premiere of Hindenburg, a major new work by Steve Reich. Nicholas Kok returned to Opera North for a new production of Gluck's Orfeo in 2004 directed by Emio Greco and Pieter Scholten and a double bill of Dido and Aeneas and Les Noces in 2007. Other festivals at which he has appeared include Edinburgh, BBC Proms, Orkney, Cheltenham, Montepulciano, Theater Forum, Valencia and Stuttgart Sommerfest.
In 1997 he made his debut at the Staatsoper in Stuttgart conducting Purcell's King Arthur, as a result of which he was invited back for a revival of that opera and a new production of L'incoronazione di Poppea. He has subsequently returned to Stuttgart to conduct productions of Hänsel und Gretel and L'italania in Algieri. For Cologne Opera he conducted Le nozze di Figaro and a new production of Semele, which he also directed in Graz. In Klagenfurt he conducted highly acclaimed productions of Handel's Teseo and Cavalli's Il Giasone.
Nicholas Kok played a large part in setting up Almeida Opera for which he conducted Mario the Magician by Stephen Oliver and A Family Affair by Julian Grant. For Opera Factory London he conducted Poppea, Dido and Aeneas, Cosi, The Magic Flute, Curlew River, The Bacchae (Xenakis), Sarajevo (Osborne) and Reimann's The Ghost Sonata and for OF Zürich La Calisto and Marschner's Der Vampyr, in his own version for chamber orchestra. Other operatic engagements have included Don Giovanni for ETO, Il Barbiere for DGOS, Cendrillon by Pauline Viardot for Opera Rara and Gerald Barry's The Intelligence Park for Almeida Festival/Opera Factory. For McKinsey/WDR/Arte Nicholas conducted the world premieres of Alexander Krampe's reworkings of Rousseau's 'Pygmalion' and Bizet's 'Carmen'.
Besides sinfonia ViVA, other orchestras and ensembles he has worked with include the Philharmonia, London Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, City of Birmingham Symphony, Royal Scottish National, Radio Sinfonie Berlin, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, BBC Scottish Symphony, BBC Concert Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Ulster Orchestra, Hallé, Strasbourg Philharmoniqe, Het Gelders Orkest, Liepaja Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Psappha, London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Bournemouth Sinfonietta, Orchestra of St John's Smith Square, Jenaer Philharmonie, Philippines Philharmonic, RNCM and the Almeida, Endymion, Nash, Premiere, Remix and Resonanz Ensembles. He also works frequently with the BBC Singers and Schola Cantorum of Oxford. He has recorded regularly for radio (including a huge number of recordings with the BBC Singers) and television, and has written and arranged music for both mediums, as well as working as banda conductor on numerous recordings for Opera Rara and Chandos. He has worked closely with several choreographers (as conductor and arranger), including Richard Alston, Emio Greco, Robert North, Ashley Page, Pat Neary and Janet Smith, and has conducted for Scottish Ballet (Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet and a Balanchine programme at the Edinburgh Festival) and Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre. He recently played the premiere of his own music for Scottish Dance Theatre's 'Out of the House' performances.
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