Nicholas McGegan

Nicholas McGegan

Nicholas McGegan is one of the best-known names among conductors associated with performances of Baroque and Classical Era music.

He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He has been Music Director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, located in San Francisco, with which he records on the (French) Harmonia Mundi label. He became conductor of the Göttingen Handel Festival in Germany in 1990.

He founded the Arcadian Ensemble, a chamber group specializing in the Baroque Era (primarily Italian composers) in 1991. He serves as its director and harpsichord player, and has frequently toured with it. It recorded with Conifer Classics; after that label was acquired by BMG the company transferred them (and other recording featuring McGegan) onto its Deutsche Harmonia Mundi label.

McGegan has been active in reviving Classical and Baroque Era operas, some of which he has led from his own editions. Among them are Martin y Soler's Una Cosa Rara, Phildor's Tom Jones, and Haydn's Orlando Paladino.

He is in demand as a guest conductor, both of the "period instruments" variety (such as the Hanover Band and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) and standard instruments (Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, and Scottish Chamber Orchestra) and full sized orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Jerusalem Symphony, and others.

He received a Gramophone Award for Early Opera in 1996 for his Göttingen recording of Handel's "Ariodante," another with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra's recording of Handel's "Susanna," and two Diapason d'Or awards for the Arcadian Academy's recording of Nicola Matteis' "Ayres for the Violin." Joseph Stevenson