Alexander Shelley is Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra and Principal Associate Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Shelley has recently been appointed as Artistic and Music Director of Artis—Naples in Florida, which will see him provide artistic leadership for Naples Philharmonic, as well as for the entire multidisciplinary arts organisation. He now takes up the position of Artistic and Music Director Designate before beginning his tenure as Artistic and Music Director from season 2024/25.
He is also Artistic Director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen’s ECHO and Deutsche Gründerpreis-winning “Zukunftslabor”. In August 2017 Shelley concluded his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Nürnberger Symphoniker, a position he held since September 2009.
Unanimous winner of the 2005 Leeds Conductors’ Competition, he has since worked regularly with the leading orchestras of Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, NDR Orchester Hannover, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestre National de Belgique, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gothenburg Symphony, Stockholm Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Milwaukee, Melbourne and New Zealand Symphony Orchestras.
Shelley’s operatic engagements have included The Merry Widow and Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet (Den Kongelige Opera); La bohème (Opera Lyra/National Arts Centre), Iolanta (Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen), Così fan tutte (Opéra national de Montpellier), and The Marriage of Figaro (Opera North) in 2015. In 2017 he led a co-production of Harry Somers’ Louis Riel with the NACO and Canadian Opera Company.
Please note: Biographies are based on information provided to the CSO by the artists or their representatives. More current information may be available on websites of the artists or their management.
