Rias Kammerchor, Marcus Creed

British conductor Marcus Creed has spent the bulk of his career in Germany, working with some of its most prestigious choral and instrumental ensembles and as a professor at the Musikhochschule in Köln. He has recorded prolifically, and his interests embrace a spectrum of music that includes composers as diverse as Bach, Handel, and Mozart to Stockhausen, Messiaen, and Kurtág, in the fields of choral music, oratorio, opera, chamber music, and orchestral music. Creed was born on April 19, 1951, in Eastbourne, England. He was educated at King's College in Cambridge, Christ Church in Oxford, and the Guildhall School in London. After moving to Berlin in the mid-'70s, he served as vocal coach and chorus master at the Deutsche Oper and participated in several chamber music ensembles. He has since worked with numerous choirs and orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Akademie für Alte Musik, and Concerto Köln, among others. From 1987 until 2001, Creed was the artistic director of the RIAS-Kammerchor, with whom he made numerous recordings and received honors including the Cannes Festival Classical Award, the Edison Award, and a Diapason d'Or. Creed took a position as a conducting professor at the Hochschule für Musik in Köln in 1998. In 2003, he was appointed artistic director of SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, a group with which he has continued to record a broadly diverse repertoire. In addition to his regular positions, he has participated in a variety of festivals, including Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Wein Modern, among many others. Creed's recording schedule has remained steady, often issuing multiple recordings yearly, including a pair in 2022, which found him conducting the Orpheus Vokalensemble and Concerto Köln for Haydn's Die Jahreszeiten on the Carus label, and he led the Danish National Vocal Ensemble on the album Lux Aeterna, performing works for choir by György Ligeti and Zoltán Kodály on OUR Recordings.
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