Jordan de Souza

Jordan de Souza (born 1988 in Toronto ) is a Canadian conductor . Since 2017 he has been 1st Kapellmeister at the Komische Oper Berlin .

life and work

Jordan de Souza is of Indian Canadian descent. He studied at McGill University in Montreal. He completed his bachelor's degree in organ and his master's degree in conducting. Then he quickly found engagements. In 2015 he was listed by the CBC among the Top 30 Classical Musicians Under 30 . He was resident artist at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta and the Franz Schubert Institute in Baden near Vienna . Since 2015 he has been Conductor in Residence of Tapestry Opera in Toronto, one of the leading North American companies for contemporary opera, and conducts a world premiere there every year in May, occasionally in collaboration with the Scottish Opera :

• 2015: M'dea Undone by Sophocles and John Harris , libretto by Marjorie Chan
• 2016: Rocking Horse Winner by DH Lawrence and Gareth Williams , libretto by Anna Chatterton
• 2017: The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. by Colleen Murphy and Aaron Gervais

Further engagements took him to the Houston Grand Opera , the Opéra de Montréal , the Canadian Opera Company , the National Ballet of Canada in Toronto and to Italy. Since 2016 he has been committed to the Bregenz Festival every year , in 2016 for Bastien and Bastienne , in 2017 and 2018 for the August series of Carmen as a play at the lake. In the 2016/17 season he was hired as director of studies at the Komische Oper Berlin and at the end of December 2016 began to take over conducting of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia , Tchaikovsky's Yevgeny Onegin and Mozart's Don Giovanni . He has been Kapellmeister of the Komische Oper since the beginning of the 2017/18 season. He conducted the first premiere of the season, Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy , staged by the director of the house, Barrie Kosky .

The artist is also present in the concert hall. At the age of 25, he conducted Bach's complete oratorio cycle ( St. Matthew Passion , St. John Passion , Mass in B minor , Christmas Oratorio ). He conducted Verdi's Messa da Requiem with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and Handel's Messiah with Symphony Nova Scotia . Jordan de Souza also performs as an organist, pianist and harpsichordist.

Web links

• Komische Oper Berlin , short biography of the conductor
• Jordan de Souza at Operabase (engagements and dates)