| NEW YORK (June 7, 2018) — Primo Artists announces the signing of 29-year-old conductor Christian Reif to its roster for General Management effective immediately.
One of the most promising conducting talents of his generation, Christian Reif is a protégé of Alan Gilbert and Michael Tilson Thomas. Born and raised in Germany, he moved to the States in 2012 and currently serves as Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, a title he has held since September 2016. He is Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, one of America’s top youth ensembles, which he conducts regularly in concerts at Davies Symphony Hall and will lead on a European tour in Summer 2019. Prior to moving to San Francisco, Reif spent two seasons in Miami as Conducting Fellow with the New World Symphony.
General Management for Christian Reif will be handled by Charlotte Lee, President and Founder of Primo Artists. Reif joins a distinguished roster that comprises violinist/conductor Itzhak Perlman, violinists Joshua Bell and Nicola Benedetti, pianists Beatrice Rana and Seong-Jin Cho and conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Bridget Canniere of IMG Artists London will handle his European/Australasian representation, in partnership with Primo Artists.
Charlotte Lee, Founder of Primo Artists, said: “I am delighted to welcome Christian Reif to the Primo Artists roster. Christian brings clarity and expressiveness together with a magical mixture of elegance, vitality and drama. I eagerly look forward to working with him and partnering with my longtime colleague Bridget Canniere to introduce the world to this truly significant conducting talent.”
Christian Reif said: “I’m thrilled to join the rosters of Primo Artists and IMG London! I felt an immediate connection with Charlotte Lee and Bridget Canniere. Their exceptional commitment to their artists speaks for itself and I look forward to working with them!”
On Christian Reif, the San Francisco Chronicle has written: “He is the complete package.” Michael Tilson Thomas, who first mentored him at the New World Symphony in Miami and brought him to San Francisco, has said: “He is an absolutely complete musician. He’s also a wonderful pianist, and he has a great knowledge of music from a theoretical point of view. He has enormous energy and wit, and he works wonderfully with people as a colleague.”
In April 2018, Reif made a highly acclaimed subscription debut with the San Francisco Symphony. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle stated: “Christian Reif stepped in on April 26th to conduct a glorious program of music by Wagner, Liszt and Holst with dazzling results. There was a vague temptation, when Reif was announced as the substitute for this week’s programs, to regard it as merely a case of tapping the understudy to go on. But to think that would be to reckon without the technical assurance and forceful interpretive prowess that this young German has repeatedly displayed over the past two years. He’s a conductor of considerable stature, and everything about Thursday’s concert in Davies Symphony Hall felt like the work of a significant musical artist.”
In the 2017/18 season, Reif led concerts with the Orchestre National de Lyon, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Brucknerorchester Linz and Berkeley Symphony and will make his debut with the Indianapolis Symphony. In August 2018, he makes his Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival debut on a program with the International Contemporary Ensemble featuring John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music.
In the 2018/19 season, he will conduct Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5 and the world premiere of Andrew Norman’s Cello Concerto with Johannes Moser as soloist on subscription with the San Francisco Symphony and a program that includes works by Britten, Shostakovich and Haydn with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Additionally he will make debuts with the Omaha Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic, and return to work with the Nürnberger Symphoniker, Berkeley Symphony and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He will also conduct a production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at Opera San Jose and a new chamber version of John Adams’s El Niño with the American Modern Opera Company as part the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s MetLiveArts series in New York.
Christian Reif studied with Alan Gilbert at the Juilliard School, where he completed his Master of Music in Conducting in 2014 and received the Charles Schiff Conducting Award. Prior to that, he studied with Dennis Russell Davies at the Mozarteum Salzburg, where he received a diploma in 2012. He is winner of the 2015 German Operetta Prize, awarded by the German Music Council, and two Kulturförderpreise awards given to promising artists of the region who promote cultural advancement in their communities. Reif is a member of Germany’s Conductor’s Forum (Dirigentenforum) and is one of the forum’s 2017/18 and 2018/19 featured “Maestros of Tomorrow”.
For more information on Christian Reif, click here.
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