Adam Hickox
Young British conductor Adam Hickox has already shown considerable promise, demonstrating an impressive fluidity of technique and mature interpretation of a wide symphonic and operatic repertoire. In 2019 he was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and this position will now run through until the end of the 2021/22 season.
Hickox's commitments in Rotterdam include assisting on programmes with their Chief Conductor Lahav Shani, Valery Gergiev and Yannick Nézet-Séguin amongst others, as well as conducting performances of his own in Rotterdam and elsewhere, including the world premiere of a new commission by Mathilde Wantenaar. In Summer 2021 he was invited to Tanglewood as one of the Tanglewood Festival's two Conducting Fellows, having been selected from hundreds of applicants; this involved extensive work with the TMC Orchestra including conducting performances at the Koussevitzky Music Shed, as well as working alongside Nelsons, Blomstedt and Gilbert. Hickox will also take part in the fellowship's corresponding residency with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.
In 2021 Hickox made his debut in France, conducting the Orchestre de Paris in an education concert focusing on Shostakovich 7, and in 2020 his Scandinavian debut with Sweden’s Gävle Symphony Orchestra. He was also re-invited to conduct the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. In 21/22 he makes his debut with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra recording music to mark the COP26 conference in Glasgow. Recent orchestral engagements include the UK premiere of Thomas Larcher Still for viola and chamber orchestra with Lawrence Power and Collegium, ‘Music of Exile’ with members of the ARC Ensemble conducting and reviving works of exiled Jewish composers from the 1930s, and concerts at the St Endellion and Klosters Music Festivals. Hickox has assisted conductors including Roth, Orozco-Estrada, Manze, Ryan Wigglesworth, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, van Steen and Alsop; most recently he assisted Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the London Symphony Orchestra and was then re-invited immediately to take a full day’s rehearsal for Sir Simon Rattle.
Also active in the opera house, in 2021/22 Hickox conducts a new production of Hansel and Gretel at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire. In Autumn 2020 he had been scheduled to return to English National Opera to conduct Knussen's Where the Wild Things Are and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, following his work in Autumn 2019 assisting Music Director Martyn Brabbins on Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus. Previously he has assisted Leo Hussain at Theater an der Wien, and Raphaël Pichon at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in a production directed by Romeo Castellucci of Mozart Requiem.
Hickox is a graduate of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, where he studied music and composition with Robin Holloway, and was the conductor of the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra. He then studied conducting with Sian Edwards at the Royal Academy of Music, where he graduated with DipRam and the Ernest Read Prize for Conducting. In 2016, he co-founded the Endelienta Ensemble, which brings together postgraduate instrumentalists for a series of concerts in Cornwall.
