Jiří Rožeň’s international presence continues to grow rapidly in the 2019/20 season as he makes his debuts with leading European orchestras and continues to develop his reputation as one of the foremost interpreters of Czech repertoire.
This season his international standing grows with debuts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse. He also conducts all the major orchestras in Belgium – Orchestre national de Belgique, Brussels Philharmonic, Antwerp Symphony as well as Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, and ap-pears elsewhere with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Hallé Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony, Poznan Philharmonic, Staatsorchester Kassel and the Romanian Radio National Orchestra. Upcoming soloist collaborations feature internationally recognised names such as Kian Soltani, Victor-Julien Laferrière, Lukas Vondracek, Marc Bouchkov, Mahan Esfahani, Lucienne Renaudin Vary, Eric Lu, and Francesca Dego.
In 2019/20 Jiří Rožeň appears at two prestigious international festivals, returning to Prague Spring Festival with PKF-Prague Philharmonia and debuting in China at the Forest Festival in Nanjing with Jiangsu Symphony Orchestra. As a passionate and knowledgeable advocate of Czech music, he regularly presents standard Czech repertoire, as well as music by Bohuslav Martinů, Josef Suk, Leoš Janáček, Viktor Kalabis and Miloslav Kabeláč. He has conducted one of his signature works, Symphony No.4 by Miloslav Kabeláč on various occasions including Austrian premiere with Camerata Salzburg at Salzburg Festival and his conducting debut at Prague Spring Festival with PKF-Prague Philharmonia.
Following his first guest conducting appearances on the international scene in spring 2018, the highlights of the 2018/19 season included concerts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, BBC Phil-harmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales as well as Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Alongside his symphonic work, Rožeň is steadily building his opera repertoire. During his time in Scotland, he has been engaged in conducting Stravinsky's Mavra, Walton's The Bear, Strauss's Die Fledermaus and Britten's Owen Wingrave. He has also conducted Ravel's L’enfant et les sortilegès with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra as well as Sven Daigger's Eine Kluge Else at the Brücken-Festival für Neue Musik in Rostock.
Born in Prague in 1991, Jiří Rožeň studied conducting at conservatoires and universities of Prague, Salzburg, Hamburg, Zürich and Glasgow, where he was Leverhulme Conducting Fellow. He has seen success in Salzburg and London as the Finalist of both the Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award and the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition. For-merly Assistant Conductor at the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Jiří was working alongside Donald Runnicles and Thomas Dausgaard and assisted them at the BBC Proms and the Edin-burgh International Festival. His mentors have included Garry Walker, Dennis Russell Davies, Ulrich Windfuhr and Johannes Schlaefli. Other important influences include Daniele Gatti, Bernard Haitink, David Zinman and Peter Eötvös in masterclasses with orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.