Biography
Joseph Swensen currently holds the posts of Principal Guest Conductor & Artistic Adviser of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Conductor Emeritus of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Founder and Artistic Director of Unity Hills Arts Centers International (U-HAC). He has also served as Principal Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (1996-2005) and the Malmö Opera (2005-2011).
As principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Joseph Swensen and the orchestra toured extensively in the US, UK, Europe and the Far East. They have performed together at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York, Tanglewood and Ravinia Festivals, the BBC Proms, the Barbican and the Concertgebouw. Swensen and the orchestra have also made several recordings including a series of CDs for Linn records, including music by Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Brahms, Prokofiev and Dvorak.
As principal conductor of the Malmö Opera in Sweden, Swensen was widely recognised as the driving force behind Malmö Opera's transformation into one of the most important opera companies in Sweden. During his tenure there, he conducted highly acclaimed productions of Salome, La Boheme, La Traviata, Macbeth, Vanessa, The Dialogues of the Carmelites, La Fanciulla del West, and Madama Butterfly, among others.
Swensen has a number of regular guest conducting commitments in addition to his work in Paris, Malmö, and Scotland. These include the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, London Mozart Players, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta de la Ciudad de Granada and Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música.
As a composer, Joseph Swensen's works include Mantram (1998) for string orchestra, Latif (1999) for solo cello with chamber ensemble, and Shizue (2001) for solo shakuhachi and orchestra and the recently premiered Sinfonia-Concertante for Horn and Orchestra (The Fire and the Rose) (2008). Swensen's orchestration of the rarely performed 1854 version of Brahms' Trio Op. 8, a work he has entitled Sinfonia in B, has been performed widely by orchestras in Europe and the US since its première in 2007.
Before deciding to dedicate himself solely to his conducting career, Swensen enjoyed a highly successful career as a violin soloist and was an exclusive recording artist with BMG Classics. Nowadays his occasional appearances as soloist are a natural extension of his work as a conductor, playing and directing concerti with orchestras with whom he enjoys a particularly close relationship. His love of chamber music results in frequent performances in that genre as well.
Joseph Swensen is the Founder and Artistic Director of Unity Hills Arts Centers International. Known as U-HAC, this non-profit aid charity is dedicated to providing the arts to deprived and disaster hit areas across the world in a similar way that UNICEF provides food and Médecins Sans Frontières provides medicine. U-HAC'S home base, located in rural Vermont USA, is a unique combination of school for the arts, retreat centre, artists colony and arts festival.
Joseph Swensen was born on August 4, 1960 in Hoboken, New Jersey and grew up in Harlem, New York City, (an American, of Norwegian and Japanese descent). He maintains residences in Copenhagen (Denmark), Florida and Vermont (USA).
www.josephswensen.com
www.u-hac.com
December 2011
Please do not use if this biography is more than 3 months old.
