ABOUT
Thomas Jung is second prize winner of the 2020 international Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition and 2017 recipient of the Eugen-Jochum-Prize for Young Conductors. He was appointed as the inaugural Constant Lambert Conducting Fellow at the Royal Opera House London, Covent Garden in 2018 and has conducted for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Thomas has been working with orchestras such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Dresden Philharmonic, SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Het Gelders Orkest, Mantua Chamber Orchestra and Tianjin Grand Opera Symphony Orchestra as a guest conductor.
Since Thomas met Bernard Haitink at the Lucerne Festival in 2013, he has been afforded the opportunity to work closely with him on numerous occasions as an Assistant and Cover Conductor.
Having a vivid interest for the interactions between all forms of art, Thomas initiated a collaboration with composer and artist Samson Young. His ongoing project of so called Muted Situations, which challenges hearing expectations of any kind, inspired Thomas to bring it to the concert hall. In the award-winning Muted Situation #22, Thomas conducted a toneless orchestra performing the 5th Symphony of Tchaikovsky — a concert performance like no other.
Thomas Jung studied at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and University of Cambridge, King's College Cambridge. He studied conducting with Volker Wangenheim and Colin Metters rounding off his training in masterclasses with Bernard Haitink, Jaap van Zweden and Jorma Panula.
He was the 2015/16 season Zander Fellow and Assistant Conductor of both the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Thomas was the founder and music director of the Flora Symphony Orchestra Cologne between 2012 and 2019 and served as Chief Conductor of the Studio Orchestra Duisburg at the same time. He furthermore was music director of the production Moses muss singen at the Opera House of Münster in the 2010/11 season .
As assistant conductor Thomas Jung worked with Semyon Bychkov and Jukka-Pekka Saraste (WDR Sinfonieorchester), Markus Stenz and François-Xavier Roth (Gürzenich-Orchester) and with Jakub Hrůša (Bamberger Symphoniker).
Thomas Jung was supported by Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, DEY Foundation, Music Foundation of the Kreissparkasse, Richard Wagner Association Bayreuth and Inspiratum VZW Belgium.
In autumn 2012 Thomas Jung received the Culture Prize of the Philippas Engel Foundation for his »social and cultural commitment to music, with music and through music.« That same year he was awarded first price and special price ›Best Performance‹ in the German Orchestra Competition.
With the Junges Ensemble für Neue Musik, which Thomas Jung had founded in 2007 to enable the performances of pieces written by students of the composition department of the Hochschule für Musik Köln, Thomas Jung conducted a wealth of world premieres between 2007 and 2010.