André de Ridder occupies a unique position amongst today’s conductors. His stylistic versatility from baroque to contemporary music, his projects and collaborations make him much in demand by orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orchestre de Paris and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. He is Artistic Director of Musica Nova Helsinki, and in 2018 he received a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his work as Artistic Curator of London’s Spitalfields Festival.

In the 2020/2021 season, de Ridder will return to such orchestras as, Tampere Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain and hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt. He performs works by Bryce Dessner and Dvořák with Orchestre national de Lyon and also returns to curate the Musica nova Helsinki festival, as the festival’s Artistic Director, where he will appear with Helsinki Philharmonic. In collaboration with the Southbank Centre, de Ridder launched a series of genre-defying concerts last season, entitled ‘Unclassified Live’ and based on the Radio 3 programme. This was co-curated and presented by the programme’s presenter Elizabeth Alker. The series resumes when the Southbank Centre reopens.

The ‘livewire conductor’ (The Times 2017) is equally active in the field of opera and music theatre, forming close relationships with some of the most prominent opera composers of our time, including Kaija Saariaho, Daníel Bjarnason, Michel van der Aa, and also performing repertoire works such as ‘The Magic Flute’, ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ and ‘Nixon in China’. In recent seasons, he has therefore worked with directors such as Kasper Holten, Barrie Kosky, Peter Sellars, Marco Štorman and Enda Walsh, and appeared at houses such as Staatstheater Stuttgart, Finnish National Opera, Dutch National Opera, Irish National Opera and Den Jyske Opera. Last season, de Ridder led a multimedia ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ project with the Philharmonia Orchestra alongside Punchdrunk Theatre Company. In the current season, he conducts Gerald Barry’s ‘Alice’s Adventures Underground’ for Irish National Opera and is reinvited to Staatsoper Stuttgart for two projects.

In 2013, he founded s t a r g a z e, performing projects ranging from Bach to Beethoven to avant-garde electronics, and contemporary classical music. The group have gained a significant following, and are regularly invited by leading concert halls, including the Barbican Centre London, the Kölner Philharmonie and Philharmonie de Paris, plus Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. In 2020, they present ‘(not) Another Beethoven Cycle’, a re-examination of all of Beethoven’s symphonies, commissioning a host of artists from a diverse range of disciplines to ‘respond’ to each symphony. The project goes to Helsinki Festival, De Doelen Hall in Rotterdam and Kolner Philharmonie, plus the ensemble appears in Istanbul and makes its debut at Lucerne Festival.

s t a r g a z e records for Transgressive Records. De Ridder’s discography also includes the hugely successful ‘Four Seasons Recomposed’ by Max Richter (DG) and an album of orchestral music by Bryce Dessner and Jonny Greenwood (DG). The Max Richter recording was awarded an ECHO Klassik ‘Classic Without Borders’ award 2013. De Ridder also acted as producer on the release of ‘Africa Express Presents: In C Mali’, on Transgressive Records. This followed a trip to Bamako, Mali, with Damon Albarn and his Africa Express project. In Mali, de Ridder initiated and led a recording of Riley’s ‘In C’ with local musicians, joined by travelling western artists including Brian Eno and Damon Albarn.