Gijs Leenaars

Gijs Leenaars took up the post of principal conductor and artistic director of the Berlin Radio Choir at the start of the 2015/16 season. Opening with an a cappella concert, given as part of Musikfest Berlin, and working with renowned conductors such as Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, John Eliot Gardiner and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gijs Leenaars enjoyed a successful first season with Berlin Radio Choir.

In December 2016 he conducted the Berlin Radio Choir in Arthur Honegger’s Le Roi David with the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin at the city’s cathedral. He also directed a celebrated a cappella programme at the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center, as well as leading the Choir’s first tour to South America, when Berlin Radio Choir visited the continent’s most important musical cities and performed the Brahms and Mozart Requiems, as well as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Born in Nijmegen in the Netherlands in 1978, Gijs Leenaars is regarded as one of the most exciting choral conductors of his generation. He studied the piano and choral and orchestral conducting, as well as singing, in Nijmegen and Amsterdam. Immediately after completing his studies, he began collaborating with the Netherlands Radio Choir in Hilversum. From 2012 to 2015 he was the ensemble’s principal conductor, working with leading conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Bernard Haitink and Valery Gergiev. He is a regular guest conductor of Collegium Vocale Ghent, Cappella Amsterdam and the Netherlands Chamber Choir and has conducted orchestras such as the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, The Hague Philharmonic and the Turin Philharmonic.

One of Gijs Leenaars’s special interests is contemporary music and he conducted the Dutch premiere of Wolfgang Rihm’s Vigilia and prepared György Kurtág’s choral works for a complete recording with the Netherlands Radio Choir under Reinbert de Leeuw. His strikingly imaginative programming brings together classics of the choral repertoire and seldom-performed works from all periods.

Current as of August 2017