Daniel Geiss

Daniel Geiss, artistic and music director of the BrixenClassics Festival since 2020, is one of the most versatile musicians of his generation.

„I worked with the conductor Daniel Geiss in Tokyo together. I appreciate his musical empathy and his clear way of getting to the heart of the message inherent in the music.“

(Katharina Wagner, Artistic director of the Bayreuth Wagner Festival)

He first studied at Indiana University Bloomington, both orchestral conducting with David Effron and violoncello with Janos Starker. Additionally chamber music with Menahem Pressler. He then went on at Cologne University of Music with Michael Luig (orchestral conducting), the Alban Berg Quartet (chamber music) and Maria Kliegel (Violoncello). He deepened his studies with courses from George Crumb and Philip Glass.

„It is my great joy to play with Daniel Geiss, a conductor who has the know how to solve any problem and clear heart to make the music sing.“

 (Stanko Madic, concertmaster of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra)

Geiss has been active as a conductor for almost two decades. His first engagements led him to orchestras in the United States, including the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, the Columbus

Symphony Orchestra and the Terre Haute Symphony Orchestra. In the following years he conducted concerts with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, in the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, the Berlin Philharmonic hall, the Teatro Real Madrid as well as with the Philharmonie Südwestfalen and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

The 2018/19 season took Daniel Geiss to Budapest, Linz, Ljubljana, St. Petersburg and Graz. In 2019, he began working intensively with the director Katharina Wagner on performances of a version specially designed for the Spring Festival Tokyo as a children’s opera by “The Flying Dutchman”. This was followed by direct re-invitations for 2020 for a production of “Tristan and Isolde” and for 2021 for “Parsifal”. Geiss also conducted at the Leipzig Music Festival and made his Italian debut with the opening concert of the 44th Cantiere Internationale d’Arte Festival in Montepulciano.

In spring 2020 Daniel Geiss was a guest in Graz, Linz and Belgrade with the EUphony Orchestra, a joint project of European music universities such as Graz, Linz, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Dortmund, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, Zagreb and Moscow. This was followed by recordings with the BR Rundfunkorchester with an innovative talk & music concept in form of podcasts initiated by Geiss.

In addition to his work as a conductor, Daniel Geiss is still active as a cellist. In 2004 he was appointed solo cellist of the orchestra of the Wiesbaden State Theater and since 2014 also as member of the Bayreuth Festival orchestra. He is a frequent guest at various music festivals such as the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Mosel Music Festival, the Savannah Music Festival, the Prague Music Festival, the Bristol Proms and the Porto Music Festival. (He performed with Daniel Hope, Lynn Harrell, Nigel Kennedy, and Sebastian Knauer, among others, and worked with conductors such as Kirill Petrenko, Christian Thielemann, Kurt Masur, and Marek Janowski.)

Daniel Geiss regularly gives master classes in Germany, Portugal, Serbia, Russia, Austria and Switzerland. He is a lecturer of violoncello and conducting at the University of Music Mainz, the University of Art in Graz, the Orchesterzentrum NRW and the Academy in Berlin.

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