The German conductor
Kevin John Edusei is notable for his African background and has performed with Britain's ethnic
Chineke! Orchestra. Yet his rapidly growing career has developed largely without connection to Africa and African music.
Edusei was born August 5, 1976, in Bielefeld, in West Germany's heavily industrialized North Rhine-Westphalia region. His father was a doctor from Ghana, his mother a German pastor and historian, and among his maternal ancestors was opera singer Antonie Wingels.
Edusei studied piano and percussion in his youth and then added sound engineering to the mix at the Berlin University of the Arts, switching to conducting while he was there. He moved on for further studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands, working with
Ed Spanjaard and
Jac van Steen, and then held a scholarship to study with
David Zinman at the Aspen Music Festival. His other short-term teachers have included
Kurt Masur,
Pierre Boulez (for whom he conducted
Stockhausen's difficult Gruppen at the Lucerne Festival), and
Péter Eötvös.
Edusei worked as a conductor primarily in German theater, at Theater Bielefeld, Theater Augsburg, and the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar for several years. A first prize at the Dmitri Mitropoulos Competition in Athens attracted bookings with major orchestras including the
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the
Staatskapelle Dresden, the
Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the
Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, and, in 2017, the
Colorado Symphony in the U.S. He led the
Chineke! Orchestra at the BBC Proms that year as well, and with that group he recorded the
Dvorak Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 ("From the New World"), and
Sibelius' Finlandia, Op. 26.
Edusei was named chief conductor of the
Munich Philharmonic in 2013, and in 2016, his contract was extended through 2022. He made his recording debut with that group with a pair of
Schubert symphonies, including the "Unfinished," on the Solo Musica label; the album was released in 2018.