Marcus Creed

Marcus Creed, a British conductor, has devoted the greater part of his professional life to Germany, where he has collaborated with many of the country’s foremost choral and instrumental ensembles and has held a professorship at the Musikhochschule in Köln. His extensive catalogue of recordings reflects wide-ranging interests that stretch from Bach, Handel, and Mozart to Stockhausen, Messiaen, and Kurtág across choral, oratorio, opera, chamber, and orchestral repertoire.

Born April 19, 1951, in Eastbourne, England, Creed studied at King’s College in Cambridge, Christ Church in Oxford, and the Guildhall School in London. After settling in Berlin in the mid-1970s he worked as vocal coach and chorus master at the Deutsche Oper and joined several chamber-music groups. Since then he has appeared with numerous choirs and orchestras, among them the Berlin Philharmonic, Akademie für Alte Musik, and Concerto Köln. Between 1987 and 2001 he served as artistic director of the RIAS-Kammerchor, producing many recordings and earning the Cannes Festival Classical Award, the Edison Award, and a Diapason d’Or. In 1998 he was named professor of conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Köln.

Creed became artistic director of SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart in 2003 and has continued to record an exceptionally varied repertoire with that ensemble. He has also taken part in festivals such as Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Wein Modern. His recording activity remains constant, frequently yielding several releases each year; two appeared in 2022, one of Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten with the Orpheus Vokalensemble and Concerto Köln on the Carus label, the other an album titled Lux Aeterna on which the Danish National Vocal Ensemble performs choral works by György Ligeti and Zoltán Kodály for OUR Recordings.