Nicholas Collon

Who is Nicholas Collon?

Nicholas Collon is a British Conductor who holds the position of Principal Conductor of Aurora Orchestra. A viola player, pianist and organist by training, Collon studied at Clare College, Cambridge. He was awarded the 2008 Arts Foundation Fellowship for conducting, having been chosen from a list of twenty nominated British conductors.

With Aurora Collon has conducted the chamber symphonies of John Adams, Schoenberg and Schreker, Birtwistle's Secret Theatre and Strauss's Metamorphosen. Together they performed Ligeti's Chamber Concerto at the Aldeburgh Festival and returned there with Schoenberg’s Erwartung to open the new Hoffmann Building. He has also appeared with Aurora in the Spitalfields and Barbican Young Genius Festivals, at the BBC Proms as part of the Young Composers’ Competition, at LSO St Luke's and at the Al Bustan Festival, Lebanon. Other concert work includes the chamber version of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Orchestra of Opera North, a programme of Schumann, Piazzolla and Stravinsky with Symphonieorchester Vorarlberg, Shostakovich Symphony No 4 with the Kensington Symphony and Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique with the Salomon Orchestra.

His operatic experience includes Walton’s The Bear and Stravinsky’s Renard for Mahogany Opera in 2008. In April 2007 he conducted Mozart's The Magic Flute, directed by Sam West, in Ramallah and Bethlehem, the first-ever staged opera production in the West Bank and returned in 2009 with the same team for performances of La Bohème.