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Hickox's commitments in Rotterdam include assisting for programmes with their Chief Conductor Lahav Shani, Valery Gergiev and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, amongst others, and was invited in April 2020 to make his debut with the orchestra on the podium. He conducts further concerts in September and conducts the opening work of the orchestra's season opening concerts, alongside Shani, the world premiere of a new commission by Mathilde Wantenaar. He was awarded the Tanglewood Festival's Conducting Fellowship for 2020, selected out of hundreds of applicants, now moved to 2021, which includes extensive work with the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, assisting projects with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and at the fellowship's corresponding residency with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.
This season he conducted the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, and has been re-invited to conduct the BBC National Orchestra of Wales where he took part in masterclasses with Martyn Brabbins. Other 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; conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in rehearsal, and concerts at the St Endellion and Klosters Music Festivals.
In Autumn 2020 he was invited to return to English National Opera to conduct Knussen Where the Wild Things Are and Ravel L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, following his work in Autumn 2019 for Birtwistle The Mask of Orpheus, assisting Music Director Martyn Brabbins. He recently also 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, and in performances of Mozart symphonies, and further to this has assisted and worked together with Ryan Wigglesworth, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, Jac van Steen and Marin Alsop.
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. In 2016, he co-founded the Endelienta Ensemble, which brings together postgraduate instrumentalists for a series of concerts in Cornwall.
2020/21 season, 430 words