Ammodo Conducting Masterclass

Maestro Luisi will be sharing some of his knowledge and experience with four very talented young conductors, who will each be given the chance to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra: Holly Choe, Mirian Khukhunaishvili, Earl Lee and Anna Rakitina. The masterclass will touch on numerous aspects of the conducting profession as the participants perform Schumann’s Symphony No. 1, Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche and two more recent works – En otra noche, en otro mundo (2020) by Angelica Negrón and Evening Land (2017) by Bent Sørensen. Hans Haffmans will be presenting the event.

The Ammodo Masterclass is being given for the sixth time. First held in 2012, the masterclass was overseen by the orchestra’s then chief conductor Mariss Jansons, followed by Valery Gergiev (in 2015), Daniele Gatti (2017 and 2018) and Iván Fischer (2020).

information and tickets

The masterclass will be streamed live at www.concertgebouworkest.nl and on the orchestra’s Facebook and YouTube channels.

The Ammodo Masterclass is made possible in part by Ammodo, the Schweizer Mengelberg Stiftung, the Kirill Kondrashin Fund and the Foundation Concertgebouworkest.

The conductors

Fabio Luisi was appointed music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2020 and is principal conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra. He will additionally be assuming the post of chief conductor of the NHK Orchestra in Tokyo starting from the 2022–23 season. Maestro Luisi first appeared with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2005, and has returned regularly ever since – most recently in March 2022, when he led the orchestra in works by Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky.

Holly Choe was born in Seoul and grew up in California. After studying the clarinet and music education, she obtained a master’s degree in wind conducting from the New England Conservatory, going on to study orchestral conducting at the Zurich University of the Arts. Choe has served as assistant conductor to Paavo Järvi with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich since the 2020–21 season. She is a recipient of the Career Assistance Award from the Solti Foundation U.S., former Mentee of Peter Eötvös Foundation, and an Award Recipient of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship.

Mirian Khukhunaishvili studied choral conducting in his native Tbilisi. He earned a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Academy of Music in Cracow in 2020, and is a co-founder of the Alter Orchestra and the Tbilisi Youth Orchestra. The Georgian conductor currently lives in Reykjavik, where he holds the post of invited professor of conducting at the Iceland University of the Arts.

Winner of the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award 2022, Earl Lee currently serves as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Ann Arbor Symphony, having previously held the positions of associate conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and resident conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The Canadian-Korean musician studied cello at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York. He studied conducting with Ignat Solzhenitsyn, going on to obtain a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with George Manahan. He then did post-graduate studies with Hugh Wolff at the New England Conservatory.

Anna Rakitina has served as assistant conductor to Andris Nelsons with the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2019. She was additionally named a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2019–20 season. Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Rakitina started out as a violinist and soprano before training as a conductor in Moscow and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg.