Daniel Geiss

DANIEL GEISS (b. 1966) is considered one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. He is Artistic Director of the Belgrade Chamber Orchestra and conductor of the Brixen Classics Festival (from 2020), as well as General Music Director of the Neubrandenburg Philharmonic and the Staatstheater Neustrelitz, Germany (from autumn 2022). He has been active as a conductor, cellist and teacher for more than two decades. Born in Essen, Germany, he graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington, studying conducting with David Efron, cello with Janos Starker and chamber music with Menachem Pressler. He continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with Michael Luig (orchestral conducting), the Alban Berg Quartet (chamber music) and Maria Kliegel (cello). He attended masterclasses with contemporary composers George Crumb and Philip Glass. After his first conducting engagements in the United States with the Owensborough Symphony Orchestra (Kentucky), in 2013 he made his debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic and at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. He has appeared at the Teatro Real in Madrid and on the stages of Budapest, Linz, Ljubljana, St. Petersburg, Montepulciano, the Mecklenburg Festival and Graz. In 2016 he conducted a concert of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra with violinist Daniel Hope at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, which was recorded for the film Sound of Life. In 2018 he will give concerts in Budapest, Linz, Ljubljana, St Petersburg and Graz. He conducts the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne, the Philharmonic Orchestra of South Westphalia, the BR Radio Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2019, in collaboration with Katharina Wagner, director and artistic director of the Wagner Festival Bayreuth, Daniel Geiss successfully staged a children's version of Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman especially for the Tokyo Spring Festival. This led to further invitations for Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal in 2020. He conducted at the Musikfest Leipzig (2019), took over the direction of the Bundesschulmusikorchester and made his Italian debut at the opening concert of the 44^th Cantiere internationale d'arte in Montepulciano. In 2020/21 he opened the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, worked with the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and conducted his first season as Music Director of the Brixen Classics Festival. Daniel Geiss is a regular guest at chamber music festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Cantiere International Art Festival, the Mosel Music Festival, the Savannah Music Festival, the Prague Music Festival, the Bristol Proms, the Porto Music Festival and the Tokyo Spring Festival. He has worked with soloists such as Sir Bryn Terfel, Daniel Hope, Camilla Newland, Juan Diego Flores, Albrecht Mayer and Klaus-Florian Vogt, Lynn Harrell, Johannes Moser and Sebastian Knauer, Jacques Amon, the Danish String Quartet and Nigel Kennedy, with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Kurt Masur and Marek Janowski, and is a member of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. He teaches cello at the University of Mainz and at the Peter-Cornelius Conservatory in Mainz and gives master classes in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Serbia, Portugal and Russia. His students have repeatedly won first prizes at national and international competitions such as the German Young Musicians Award, the Dotzauer Competition, the International Lions Competition, the Cidade de Vigo Competition and the Musica pro Arte Competition. Since 2014 he has been artistic director of the innovative teaching concept "KLANGLABOR", a leading principle for future-oriented orchestra education, with projects in Mainz, Graz, Dortmund, Lucerne, Heidenheim (as part of the Opera Festival), Montepulciano, Leipzig and as part of the orchestra project EUphony in Linz, Budapest, Belgrade, Zagreb, Vienna, Ljubljana and Cluj. From 2019 he has been invited to join the faculty of the renowned Hope Academy in Berlin. He is a guest lecturer at the Berlin Academy of Music.