Halifax Summer Opera Workshop and Festival is proud to introduce conductor Kevin Mallon, who will be conducting HSOF’s first opera performed with professional orchestra.
For the first time in 2013, the Halifax Summer Opera Workshop and Festival will feature an orchestra in one of its productions.
HSOF general manager Marja Ernst said recently, “This is a big occasion for us. It is our first year presenting a show with orchestra, so we knew we had to get someone special for the event! Conductor Kevin Mallon is a gregarious and energetic Irishman (although he has lived in Canada some twenty years) and we are delighted to have his talent to guide and direct our young singers.”
Mallon is not new to the Nova Scotia music scene, as he is a long-time favorite with Symphony Nova Scotia. He has worked with them on many occasions, including last year’s presentation of “Time of the Titanic.” The orchestra for Figaro is made up of players from the symphony – a certain indicator of the musical quality of the musical quality to be presented.
Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The marriage of Figaro) will be presented at the James Dunn Theatre on:
Saturday August 10, 7:30 pm,
Tuesday August 13, 7:30 pm
Thursday August 15, 7:30 pm Saturday August 17, 2:00 pm
Tickets are available from the Arts Centre box office at 902 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669.
In addition to Il nozze di Figaro, the Halifax Summer Opera Festival is presenting Poulenc’s Les
dialogues des carmélites and Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
Here’s a few words about Kevin:
Conductor Kevin Mallon was brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music and at Dartington College of Arts, studying composition with Peter Maxwell Davies, conducting with John Eliot Gardiner, singing and specializing in baroque violin.
He became concert-master with Le Concert Spirituel and Les Arts Florissants in Paris and led and directed The Irish Baroque Orchestra before moving to Canada to take up posts with Tafelmusik
Baroque Orchestra and the University of Toronto, (positions he left to pursue his conducting career). In 1999 he founded the instrumental and vocal group the Aradia Ensemble, with whom he has toured widely, and become conductor of the Toronto Chamber Orchestra and has made over 50 recordings for Naxos.
Kevin is no stranger to opera, having run his own professional company (Opera 2005) in Ireland for five years and also having worked in Odessa, Ukraine for a year in 2010. His most recent appointments are as Music Director of the Thirteen Strings Chamber Orchestra in Ottawa (2010), Conductor of the Centre for Opera Studies in Italy (2010) and as Conductor of New York’s newly-formed West Side Chamber Orchestra (2011). Kevin is also a frequent guest conductor with orchestras and opera companies in Canada and abroad.
Kevin Mallon is available for press interviews. Please contact HSOF General Manager Marja Ernst at 902-541-7141 or admin@halifaxsummeroperaworkshop.com to arrange an interview.
