Kevin John Edusei
(1976)
German conductor.
He is in his eighth and final season as Chief Conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, and from the 2022/2023 season will be Principal Guest Conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
Biography
Early life
Edusei is of mixed Ghanaian and German ancestry, with a Ghanaian physician father and a German historian, theologian and pastor mother. His maternal grandmother, Antonie Wingels, was an opera singer with the Theater Bielefeld. He learned piano as a child, and subsequently changed his musical study interests to percussion. At age 14, he became a percussionist with the youth orchestra in Ostwestfalen-Lippe. He studied percussion, sound engineering, and conducting at the Berlin University of the Arts. He continued his formal academic music studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where his teachers included Jac van Steen and Ed Spanjaard.
In the USA, Edusei held a 3-month conducting scholarship at the 2004 Aspen Music Festival, where David Zinman served as a mentor. He was one of three participants in the 2007 Lucerne Festival Academy conducting class, under the guidance of Pierre Boulez and Péter Eötvös. He was a first-prize recipient in the 2008 Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition. His other conducting mentors included Marc Albrecht, Kurt Masur, and Sylvain Cambreling.
Early career
From 2004, Edusei served as First Kapellmeister, and subsequently Deputy Generalmusikdirektor, at the Theater Bielefeld. From 2007 to 2011, he was First Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater Augsburg. He also served on the conducting staff of the Deutsches National Theater Weimar for 2 years.
Career in Europe
In May 2013, Edusei was named chief conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, effective with the 2014-2015 season. In June 2016, this contract was extended through the 2021-2022 season.
Edusei also served as principal guest conductor of the Konzert Theater Bern and subsequently became Chief Conductor from 2015-2019. During his tenure, he led new productions of Peter Grimes, Salome, Bluebeard’s Castle, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Káťa Kabanová, and a cycle of the Da Ponte operas. Other opera productions conducted during this time included a staged production of Verdi’s Requiem with Hamburg State Opera in 2018, Tosca with Staatsoper Hannover in 2019, and The Marriage of Figaro with English National Opera in 2020.
Edusei made his conducting debut at The Proms with the Chineke! Orchestra in August 2017. He conducted the Chineke! Orchestra in its first commercial recording, for the Signum label. Other major orchestra guest appearances in Europe have included Rotterdam Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Career in the United States
Edusei first guest-conducted the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (FWSO) in September 2021. In December 2021, the FWSO announced his appointment as its next principal guest conductor, effective with the 2022-2023 season, with an initial contract of 3 years.
Guest appearances in 2021/22 season.
Edusei made appearances with the following orchestras in the 2021/22 season:
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Ensemble Resonanz Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Dallas Symphony Orchestra Essen Philharmonic BBCSSO/RSNO Chineke! Orchestra Juilliard Orchestra at Alice Tully Hall Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Minnesota Orchestra Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra Aspen Festival
Recordings
Orchestra Album Soloist (if any) Label Release year
Munich Symphony Orchestra Schubert Symphonies Nos 3 & 7 Solo Musica 2020
Bern Symphony Orchestra Shostakovich, Weinberg & Kobekin Anastasia Kobekina, cello Claves Records 2019
Munich Symphony Orchestra 1939 Fabiola Kim, violin Solo Musica 2019
Munich Symphony Orchestra Schubert Symphonies Nos 5 & 6 Solo Musica 2018
Bern Symphony Orchestra Korngold & Mozart: Violin Concertos Claves Records 2018
Munich Symphony Orchestra Schubert: Symphonies Nos 4 & 7 Solo Musica 2017
Chineke! Orchestra Dvořák & Sibelius Signum Records 2017
Tonkünstler Orchestra Enjott Schneider: Bach, Dracula, Vivaldi & Co. Csaba Kelemen, trumpet, Stefan Langbein, trombone WERGO 2016
Tonkünstler Orchestra Enjott Schneider: Shadows in the Dark WERGO 2016
Munich Symphony Orchestra Tchaikovsky: Extracts from the Nutcracker Solo Musica 2016
Munich Symphony Orchestra Einschoch6: Die Stadt springt Einschoch6 Solo Musica 2015