Conductor
Nicholas Collon co-founded and served as artistic director of the
Aurora Orchestra, an ensemble known for its innovative presentation and programming. His fresh approach has led to posts with major orchestras in his native Britain and abroad.
Collon was born on February 7, 1983, in London. He trained as a violist, pianist, and organist, playing the viola in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
Collon attended the prestigious secondary school Eton College and then went on to Clare College, Cambridge, as an organ scholar, an organist who receives a scholarship in exchange for providing music at religious services. In 2004, he and a group of other musicians from the National Youth Orchestra formed the
Aurora Orchestra, which has been notable for its all-memorized concerts and its unusual thematic program.
Collon remains the group's artistic director. He was mentored in the development of the orchestra by conductor
Robin Ticciati, and he also had the benefit of instruction from
Colin Davis and
Mark Elder. After completing an Arts Foundation Fellowship,
Collon began to find guest conducting engagements. He conducted performances of
Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620 (2007), and
Puccini's La bohème (2009) in the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem; these were the first staged opera performances ever held in the West Bank.
Collon served as assistant conductor of the
London Philharmonic Orchestra during the 2011-2012 season and made his
English National Opera conducting debut in 2012. He was co-principal conductor of the
Residentie Orkest den Haag in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2018 and sole principal conductor from 2018 to 2021. In 2021,
Collon became the first non-Finnish conductor of the
Finnish National Radio Orchestra.
Collon has conducted the
Aurora Orchestra and other groups on several recordings, often focusing on contemporary music. With the
Aurora Orchestra, he issued two recordings,
Road Trip and
Insomnia, on the Warner Classics label.
Collon and the
Aurora Orchestra moved to Deutsche Grammophon for the album Music of the Sphere, featuring compositions with a cosmological theme.