Marc Neikrug – composer/conductor/Artistic Director
Composer and pianist Marc Neikrug has had an international career for half a century. His works have been performed internationally, by the National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa, the BBC Symphony, London Synfonietta, English Chamber Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, Zurich Tonhalle, Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony, Liege Orchestra, Lisbon Gulbenkian Orchestra, Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, Osaka Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra.
Major performances have taken place with the New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the symphonies in Boston, Pittsburgh, Houston, Atlanta, Cincinnati, New World (Miami), St. Louis, Milwaukee, Washington DC, Chicago, Utah, Dallas, Phoenix, New Mexico, the Minnesota and Cleveland orchestras, and the St. Paul and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestras.
Festival performances have been at Ravinia, Tanglewood, Hollywood Bowl, Aspen, Angel Fire, La Jolla, Marlboro, Menlo, Savannah, London’s South Bank, Aldeburgh, Berlin Festival, Frankfurt Festival, Schleswig Holstein, Zurich, Melbourne, Tokyo’s Music Today, and Jerusalem Festival.
Noted performers of his music include Zubin Mehta, Loren Maazel, Christoph Eschenbach, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Alan Gilbert, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Donald Runnicles, Lawrence Foster, Oliver Knussen, James Galway, Pinchas Zukerman, Susan Graham, Yefim Bronfman, Jeremy Denk, Maximilian Schell, John Turturro, John Rubenstein, and the Emerson, Vermeer, Tokyo, Shanghai, Flux, Jerusalem and Orion Quartets.
His music theater work Through Roses, was commissioned by London’s South Bank Festival with the National Theater. Since its premiere in 1980 it has had hundreds of performances in fifteen countries and has been translated into 11 languages. There are three CD’s on Deutsche Grammaphon, Enya, and Koch International. There have also been two films produced, a documentary by Christopher Nupen, and a feature film directed by Jurgen Flimm and starring Maximilian Schell.
Los Alamos, an anti-nuclear opera written in 1988, is the only American opera ever commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Its American premiere was at the Aspen Music Festival.
Mr. Neikrug has been composer in residence at the Marlboro, Santa Fe, Angel Fire, Aspen, Bravo Vail, and La Jolla festivals.
Works have been recorded on Deutsche Grammaphon, Koch International, Stereophile, Laurel, and Enya records. Publishers are G. Schirmer and Chester.
For four decades he enjoyed an international career as a collaborative concert pianist. He concertized with many of the most esteemed artists of our time, including Jaqueline Du Pre, Jessye Norman, Susan Graham, Lynn Harrell and others. Most notably he performed in a Duo with Pinchas Zukerman for 35 years. Their discography spans the complete repertoire for violin and piano on over twenty CDs.
Mr. Neikrug has been the Artistic Director of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival since 1998. He has led the Festival to recognition as one of the most prominent events of its kind.