HarrisonParrott is delighted to welcome conductor André de Ridder to our roster for worldwide general management. He is in demand with orchestras and opera houses worldwide and is well known for his extraordinary versatility, from baroque to contemporary to pop. De Ridder’s projects and collaborations take him to such orchestras as Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphony-Orchester Berlin, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Concertgebouworkest and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and he has premiered works by composers such as Michel van der Aa, Hans Abrahamsen, Daníel Bjarnason, Nico Muhly and Kaija Saariaho.

Now in his second season as General Music Director of Theater Freiburg, de Ridder has been enormously popular at the house and has broken new ground with his distinctive programming style. Enterprising productions have included an acclaimed production of Wozzeck directed by Marco Storman, the German premiere of Nico Muhly’s Marnie and the forthcoming Game On Magic Flute, which turns Mozart’s opera into an audience-interactive computer game doubling as a Black-Mirror style dystopian thriller. He also leads internationally acclaimed new productions as a guest conductor at such houses as Stuttgart (Nixon In China), Basel (Einstein On the Beach) and Cologne (York Hoeller’s Meister und Margarita).

De Ridder is also known for his genre-defying projects, which bring artists from a pop background into the orchestral sphere, working in this capacity with such names as Cate le Bon, Shiva Feshareki, Flaming Lips, Gorillaz, David Longstreth, Mica Levi, and Anna Meredith. Alongside Elizabeth Alker, he curates the BBC Radio 3 series Unclassified Live at the Southbank Centre, in the context of the cult radio programme of the same name, presenting works that defy genre classification. 

In 2013, De Ridder founded s t a r g a z e, performing projects ranging from Bach to avant-garde electronics, and contemporary classical music. The group has gained a significant following, and is regularly invited by leading presenters, including the Barbican Centre, the Kölner Philharmonie, Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Helsinki Festival, Lucerne Festival and BBC Proms.

He has collaborated with composer Bryce Dessner on multiple performances worldwide, recording Dessner’s music for the feature films The Revenant and She Came to Me, plus an album for Deutsche Grammophon of St Carolyn by the Sea and Suite from There Will be Blood. De Ridder’s discography includes the hugely successful Four Seasons Recomposed by Max Richter, also for DG. The Max Richter recording was awarded an ECHO Klassik Classic Without Borders award and has topped the classical charts in over 20 countries.

De Ridder was Artistic Director of Musica Nova Helsinki 2017 – 2021, and in 2018 was the recipient of a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his innovative work as Artistic Curator of London’s Spitalfields Festival.