Honored Conductor Nic McGegan Celebrates His 70th Year with a Series of Performances Both Here and Abroad

Nic McGegan celebrates his 70th birthday throughout the 2019-2020 season with highly-anticipated engagements across the United States and Europe. As a hallmark to his passion for historically-informed performances, this series of performances with friends old and new underscores his formidable expertise as a baroque and classical artist performing at the highest level. 

Beginning his sixth decade on the podium, McGegan launches the season at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (September 5) in an all-Mozart program. Later this fall, he reunites with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (October 26-27) conducting Rameau, Mozart, and Schubert. 

The celebration spans the United States with guest appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra (November 21-23), Houston (December 20-22), Baltimore (March 6-8), St. Louis (February 29 - March 1), Pasadena (March 21), and New Jersey symphonies (May 1-3). He also will return to the Aspen Festival in the summer. Many of these performances are a time-honored tradition for Nic, who has a 20-year run at the Hollywood Bowl, more than 30 years with the St. Louis Symphony, and roughly a decade with the Aspen Festival. 

McGegan begins the final season of his 34-year tenure as Music Director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale with a world premiere from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, A Cosmic Notion, plus her new work, The Listeners. Performances take place in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley (October 17-20). Numerous other performances and regional tours occur throughout the season, concluding with a collaboration with Centre de musique baroque de Versailles to showcase Leclair’s Scylla et Glaucus in its US premiere on April 15, 17-19, 2020, in San Francisco, and then April 25-26, 2020, at the Royal Opera House at the Palace of Versailles. Follow the designated hashtag, #PBOReflects, for social media content related to McGegan’s history with Philharmonia Baroque.

Venturing across the Atlantic, McGegan makes debuts with two orchestras in Poland: Szczecin Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra (October 4) and the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic Orchestra (October 11). To ring in the new year, McGegan conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Handel’s iconic Messiah in Glasgow. Later in 2020, he returns to Göttingen International Handel Festival, where he spent 20 years (1991-2001) as the festival’s Artistic Director and conductor. In celebration of the festival’s 100th anniversary, he will lead a production of Handel’s Rinaldo, the result of a Juilliard residency in February 2020 in which he will collaborate across multiple ensembles: orchestra, opera, and Juilliard 415.

McGegan was recently given a lifetime appointment as Principal Guest Conductor for Capella Savaria, the Hungarian ensemble that performs on original instruments. He has collaborated and recorded with them since 1984. Their 19th recording together, Mozart Serenades, will be released in Spring 2020.

“To say that I am totally delighted to have been offered this title doesn’t really begin to say how pleased, honoured and thrilled I am,” McGegan said.