MEET THE CONDUCTOR: Nathaniel Efthimiou

Nathaniel Efthimiou, conductor
A Joyful Future
May 21, 2022 at 5PM

Background: Award-winning conductor Nathaniel Efthimiou is the founding Music Director of Orchestra Contempo, Interim Assistant Conductor of Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music. He was recently granted The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award and was a quarterfinalist in the 2021 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition with the London Symphony Orchestra.

       
In January 2022, he made a last-minute subscription debut with the Rhode Island Philharmonic, returning just three months later to conduct an American program of works by Gershwin, Price, and Gabriela Lena Frank. In 2015, he won the James Conlon Conducting Prize at the Aspen Music Festival and School where he spent two summers as a conducting fellow studying with prominent teachers such as Robert Spano, Larry Rachleff, and Hugh Wolff. In 2018, a performance he conducted of Strauss’s Don Juan with the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra was featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today. He has conducted orchestras such as the Bohuslav Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra and the Aspen Festival Orchestra and has covered the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rhode Island Philharmonic under Steven Karidoyanes and Bramwell Tovey, respectively. In 2017, he completed an Artistic Administration internship with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, where he assisted newly appointed principal conductor, Robert Moody, and served as a member of the symphony’s artistic team. In the opera pit, he has participated in masterclasses with Nicolas McGegan and Patrick Summers, and he has assisted in productions including Debussy’s Pelleas et Melisande, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, and Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

       
Nathaniel is a passionate advocate for new music. In October 2018, he led four performances of Tom Cipullo’s provocative operetta, After Life, with the BU Opera Institute, and in August 2016, he rehearsed and conducted Flatline by Matthew Ricketts, the 2016 Jacob Druckman Prize winner at the Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies. In collaboration with the Boston University Center for New Music, Nathaniel has stepped in to rehearse works by both student and faculty composers such as Klaus Lang and 2019 Boston University Composition Competition winner, Patrick Walker. A composer himself, Nathaniel has studied with Joel Hoffman, David Ludwig, and Georg Tsontakis. His work has been featured in composition festivals such as the Atlantic Music Festival in Waterville, Maine, “UPBEAT” in Milna, Croatia, and WSKG’s television program, Expressions, in Binghamton, NY.

       
Nathaniel holds a Bachelor of Music in Composition and a Master of Arts from Greatbatch School of Music at Houghton College. In 2020, he completed doctoral studies in orchestral conducting at Boston University, where he studied with Bramwell Tovey. He holds dual-citizenship in the United States and Finland and currently resides in Boston.

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