Nils Schweckendiek

Nils Schweckendiek studied music at Clare College, Cambridge, and orchestral and choral conducting in Freiburg and Helsinki. In 2006 he made his debut at the Finnish National Opera with Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier and subsequently conducted numerous opera and ballet performances at the same house. Guest performances have taken him to the Leipzig Opera (Der Rosenkavalier), the Savonlinna Opera Festival, Vaasa, Berne and Bielefeld. From 2009-2013 he was the conductor of the Ulm Opera, where he conducted first nights of, amongst others, Don Carlo (Verdi), Ariodante (Handel), Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), Der Ring an einem Abend (Wagner) and Le sacre du printemps (Stravinsky).

Nils Schweckendiek is committed to performing the music of our time and has conducted around eighty first performances, including music theatre, orchestral, choral and ensemble works. In 2013 his performance of Einojuhani Rautavaara's monumental Vigilia with the Helsinki Chamber Choir was televised on ARTE. He has worked with numerous orchestras in Finland, Germany, Spain, England, China and Estonia.

Since 2007 Nils Schweckendiek has been Artistic Director of the Helsinki Chamber Choir. In 2014 he was appointed Professor of Choral Conducting at the University of the Arts (Sibelius Academy) in Helsinki. Guest conducting has included the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the Danish Radio National Concert Choir. In the 2015/16 season he will be appearing with Tapiola Sinfonietta, the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, the Mannheim Opera Choir, the Netherlands Radio Choir, the Croatian Radio and TV Choir, and defunensemble. He is Founder and Artistic Director of the International Einojuhani Rautavaara Composition Competition, the second edition of which is being held in 2015/16.