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PAUL FITZSIMON |
Guest Conductor |
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PRESENTING PARTNER
The 28 year old Australian conductor Paul Fitzsimon graduated from the University of Melbourne majoring in piano performance and completed his formal conducting studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin with Prof. Lutz Köhler. In 2008/09 he was Assistant Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and was the winner of the 2008 Brian Stacey Award for emerging Australian conductors.
From 2003 until 2008 Paul was an active participant in the Symphony Australia Conductor Development Program, working with Gianluigi Gelmetti, János Fürst, Sir Charles Mackerras, Christopher Seaman and others. In 2003 Paul attended the conducting classes at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy, with Gianluigi Gelmetti, and was funded by the Sydney Symphony to study further with Maestro Gelmetti in 2004.
For the 2006 Melbourne International Festival Paul conducted the Australian premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Hommage a T. S. Eliot. In 2007 and 2008 he conducted performances as part of the Symphony Australia Young Performer Awards Grand Final, as well as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Chapel off Chapel in Melbourne, the Australian premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s The Sealed Angel with Melbourne Chorale, and Tchaikovsky’s complete Swan Lake with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra and The Australian Conservatoire of Ballet.
In 2008 Paul conducted the world premiere of Marcello Panni’s Short as part of the MSO’s Metropolis series, as well as the MSO’s inaugural performance in the new Melbourne Recital Centre. He conducted concerts with the Canberra and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras and engagements in 2009 included concerts with the Sydney Symphony and Orchestra Victoria.
Paul conducted his first concerts in Germany in 2009 with the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Wernigerode and the Berliner Symphoniker. In 2010 he made a successful debut at the Heidelberg Spring Music Festival conducting works of Magnus Lindberg and others, as well as conducting again the Berliner Symphoniker.
In addition to returning to conduct at the Heidelberg Spring Music Festival, engagements in 2011 included concerts with the Queensland and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras as well as the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and Ensemble Modern as part of the inaugural Biennale for contemporary music in Darmstadt. He conducted in Baden-Baden with the Hamburg Ballet, and in 2012 is musical assistant at the Graz Opera for their new productions of Elektra and Dido and Aenaes, as well as in Sydney for Opera Australia’s new production of Salome.
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