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Kevin John Edusei

conductor

Kevin John Edusei is praised repeatedly for the drama and tension that he brings to his music-making, for his clear sense of architecture and attention to detail.

A suave and elegant figure on the podium, he has conducted widely across Europe, dividing his time equally between the concert hall and opera house. He is Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

Highlights of Edusei’s 2020/21 season include his debuts with the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and his return to the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Concertgebouw.  Highlights of previous seasons include the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Bamberg Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber orchestras as well as his BBC Proms and Royal Festival Hall debuts with the Chineke! Orchestra.

Edusei was appointed Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra in 2014. He has been applauded for introducing an eclectic range of repertoire into the MSO concert programmes and cultivating a loyal, trusting audience, and in recognition of these achievements the orchestra was awarded the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal Government in 2018. In 2019 Edusei will lead the Munich Symphony Orchestra on their first tour of China and Korea.

As Chief Conductor at Bern Opera House, Edusei has led many new productions including Peter Grimes, Salome, Bluebeard’s Castle, Tannhäuser, Kátya Kábanová, a cycle of the Mozart Da Ponte operas - described in the press as “rousing and brilliant” - and Ariadne auf Naxos which led the Neue Zürcher Zeitung to describe him as “the discovery“ of the production. Elsewhere Edusei has conducted at the Semperoper Dresden (Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Hindemith's Cardillac) and in 2018 he made his debut at the Hamburg State Opera. He has conducted Die Zauberflöte at the Volksoper Wien and Komische Oper Berlin where he has also conducted Don Giovanni. In 19/20 he makes his debut at the Hannover State Opera in a new production of Tosca and at English National Opera in a new production of The Marriage of Figaro.

Edusei has a varied discography, which includes recordings with the Bern Symphony Orchestra, Chineke! Orchestra and Tonkünstler Orchestra, and he is currently mid-way through a cycle of the complete Schubert symphonies with the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

Edusei was born in Germany.  In 2004 he was awarded the fellowship for the American Academy of Conducting at the Aspen Music Festival by David Zinman, in 2007 he was a prize-winner at the Lucerne Festival conducting competition under the artistic direction of Pierre Boulez and Peter Eötvös, and in 2008 he won the International Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition.