KEVIN MALLON
Conductor

Bio

Kevin Mallon, Conductor
The Irish musician Kevin Mallon, now resident in Canada, is quickly developing a worldwide reputation. With an impressive background that includes conducting studies with John Eliot Gardiner, composition with Peter Maxwell Davies, with training at Chetham’s School of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and at Dartington College of Arts, Mallon learned his craft as a violinist with such orchestras as the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, and later as concertmaster with Le Concert Spirituel and Les Arts Florissants in Paris. With these groups he has recorded extensively and toured the world. He has performed concerts all over Europe, including Vienna, London, Berlin and Paris, with appearances in Russia, the Baltic States, China, Japan, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.

Before moving to Canada to take up positions with the University of Toronto and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Kevin Mallon was active both in his native Ireland and throughout Europe. He was conductor of the Irish Baroque Orchestra as well as Musical Director of the Harty Ensemble in Belfast. He also conducted numerous orchestras and opera companies in Ireland, including the Ulster Orchestra, Castleward Opera and the National Chamber Choir.

Kevin Mallon formed and became the Music Director of the Aradia Ensemble in 1996. This vocal and instrumental group has achieved extraordinary successes. They have made numerous recordings for Naxos, all of which have received international praise. The ensemble was featured in 2000 at the New Zealand International Chamber Music Festival, and in 2003 at the Musica nel Chiostro festival in Tuscany.

Although Kevin Mallon specializes in music of the Baroque period, he is in demand to conduct a wide repertoire. As part of his recording contract with Naxos, he is Music Director of the Toronto Chamber Orchestra, a group made up of some of Toronto’s best orchestral musicians, with whom he has already made fifteen recordings.

Having conducted Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress and Lucas et Cecile by the Canadian Joseph Quesnel with the contemporary opera company Opera Anonymous, in recent years Mr. Mallon has formed an association with Toronto’s Opera in Concert, conducting Handel’s Semele, Rinaldo and Tamerlano, Vivaldi’s Griselda, Rameau’s Castor et Pollux and Mozart’s Zaide with the company. He has also developed a specialty in Viennese Operetta, having conducted many programs for the Toronto Operetta Theatre.

Engagements as a guest conductor have taken Mallon to Finland, Sweden, Poland and the United States. He has recently taken up the position of Music Director of Opera 2005 in Cork, Ireland, conducting a series of operas as part of Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. This opera company has already achieved remarkable success and has twice been nominated for Best Opera Production in the prestigious Irish Times Theatre Awards. Also interested in Irish music, he is a member of the Toronto-based international group Dulaman. Kevin Mallon has made over forty recordings for Naxos in Baroque and Classical repertoire.