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Oliver Zeffman

About this Artist

A conductor of "tremendous ardour and shrewd dramatic timing" (The Telegraph, 2023), Oliver is widely seen as one of today's most intrepid young musicians.

Alongside upcoming/recent concerts and recordings with the likes of the London Symphony Orchestra, LA Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, CBSO, Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France, Oliver is recognised as "an entrepreneurial tour de force" (BBC Music Magazine, 2023), "with a record for getting things done" (Gramophone, 2023).

Projects he's initiated include Classical Pride - the inaugural event in 2023 was the first time any major orchestra or concert hall outside the US had celebrated Pride and was described as "achieving so much more for inclusivity in classical music than the last ten years of strategic planning by the sector." Music x Museums was a series of concerts in partnership with London museums such as the V&A, Cutty Sark and Science Museum, all filmed for Apple Music; and Eight Songs from Isolation - an opera-film comprising eight new works from several of today’s leading composers that was shot, at the height of the pandemic, right across Europe, Asia and America, and was nominated for five Opus Klassik Awards.

A firm advocate for contemporary music, Oliver has commissioned and premiered over 30 new pieces from some of the most exciting composers of today. In previous years, he gave the Russian premieres of a number of important 20th- and 21st-century works, including George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence, Birtwistle’s The Triumph of Time, Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, Walton’s Façade and Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures.

A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, Oliver originally studied History and Russian at Durham University and also spent a year at the St Petersburg State Conservatory.