About

Nicholas Koo is a Korean-American conductor currently serving multiple orchestras across the United States including the Minnesota Orchestra, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and the San Diego Symphony. Nicholas made his debut as a guest conductor with the Minnesota Orchestra in March of 2024 and made previous appearances conducting the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in their regular season. Throughout his career, he has assisted a number of notable conductors including Donald Runnicles, Fabien Gabel, and Marin Alsop and worked alongside soloists such as Emanuel Ax, Hélène Grimaud, Paul Huang, Joyce Yang, and the Royal Concertgebouw’s very own, Jörgen van Rijen. Most recently, Nicholas was featured alongside renowned soloist, Hilary Hahn, conducting the Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in workshop. Off the podium, Nicholas works in collaboration with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association in artistic media, using his experience as a conductor to coordinate score calls for a number of recording projects.

BIO

Nicholas was chosen by the Solti Foundation U.S. as a 2023 recipient of the prestigious Career Assistance Award for young conductors and in 2024 was awarded the Elizabeth Buccheri Solti Opera Residency. In December of 2022, he was hand-selected from a pool of over 300 world-wide applications as an active conductor in the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy in Ravenna, Italy where, through a series of rehearsals and masterclasses, he studied and worked alongside Maestro Muti to explore the depths and traditions of the work, effectively rehearsing and performing Verdi’s monumental Messa da Requiem. Nicholas was invited to be assistant conductor for the Peninsula Music Festival as the 2023 Karen Smuda Emerging Conductor and returned in 2024 as the festival's assistant conductor. In the summer of 2024 and 2022, he was invited to join the artist roster of Festival Mozaic as the festival’s first assistant conductor where, in collaboration with the San Luis Obispo Movement Arts Collective, he produced and led family concert performances of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. Under the mentorship of conductor Scott Yoo, Koo has been a frequent conductor at the Colorado College Summer Music Festival, most recently as the 2021 recipient of the Perotti-Holmes endowed fellowship. In partnership with PBS television, Mr. Koo was featured leading the CCSMF Orchestra in the critically-acclaimed television series, Now Hear This, conducting film scores by Aaron Copland alongside the original cinematography. A strong advocate for contemporary music, Nicholas also served as music director for the Atlantic Music Festival Contemporary Ensemble and as assistant conductor of the Atlantic Music Festival Symphony Orchestra where he premiered more than 20 new works for chamber and full orchestra.

“…a natural physical affinity for gesture…”

Vance George

San Francisco Symphony Chorus Director Emeritus

In the Chicago area, Nicholas received continued mentorship under Riccardo Muti in the Maestro’s final seasons with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He is a recipient of the Northwestern University's Bienen Eckstein Scholarship through which he received his master’s degree in conducting in 2018 and his doctorate of musical arts as the final student of Victor Yampolsky in 2022. His dissertation work culminated in a US premiere of a new arrangement of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. In his time at Northwestern, Nicholas served as assistant conductor with the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra and accompanied the orchestra on its first international tour to China in the spring of 2018, highlighting the music of Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein. In partnership with the Northwestern University Opera Company, Nicholas led a production of Johann Strauss II’s operetta, Die Fledermaus, as well as premieres of contemporary student operas with the university’s composer collective. In addition, he served as assistant to the Northwestern Contemporary Music Ensemble under director Alan Pierson prior to and throughout the COVID pandemic where he was instrumental in engineering new, innovative, and aleatoric methods of music-making through cloud-based synchronized technology.

Originally from the Bay Area, California, Nicholas attended the University of California Berkeley for undergraduate degrees in both molecular cell biology and music and it is where he began his conducting studies with the director of orchestras, David Milnes, while simultaneously studying choral conducting with San Francisco Symphony Chorus Director Emeritus, Vance George and professor of music, Marika Kuzma. A two-time recipient of the Alfred Hertz Memorial Traveling Scholarship, Nicholas has participated in various masterclasses with eminent musical figures such as Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel. Among many others, his list of mentors include Riccardo Muti, Leonard Slatkin, Fabien Gabel, Scott Yoo, and Rune Bergmann.