Mark Biggins is a young British conductor with a particular passion for teaching and education. He currently studies with Peter Stark and Howard Williams at the Royal College of Music where he is supported by an HR Taylor Trust Award and Reintamm Conducting Award. He enjoys regular collaborations with the RCM Philharmonic, RCM Symphony and Croydon Youth Symphony and has recently assisted Vladimir Jurowski and Martyn Brabbins. In 2016 Mark has worked as assistant conductor at the Cheltenham Festival and West Green House Opera and conducted the Aylesbury Symphony Orchestra and RCM Junior Department Symphony.
As an undergraduate Mark read Music at Clare College Cambridge, graduating with the Lester Brough and Royalton-Kisch prizes. As a conducting scholar, he conducted all the university's major ensembles as well as assisting Sir Roger Norrington, David Hill and Dmitry Sitkovetsky. Mark has continued to lead student ensembles at St. Andrews, Yale and Wesleyan universities and has been invited twice to join the conducting program at the Atlantic Music Festival in Maine, studying with David Amado and Jonathan Schiffman. He has conducted all over Europe and America and was recently selected as a semi-finalist at the ACDA conducting competition in Salt Lake City and invited for a residency at the Hochschule der Künste in Zurich.
Mark previously studied orchestral conducting with Shinik Hahm and choral conducting with David Hill at Yale School of Music. He was Music Director at Yale’s historic Battell Chapel and a fellow at Saybrook College where he directed the College Orchestra. Also an accomplished singer, Mark sang with the Yale Schola Cantorum with whom he toured America, Europe and Asia, recorded extensively for Harmonia Mundi and collaborated with the New York Philharmonic, Bach Collegium Japan and Julliard415 under conductors including Masaaki Suzuki, Stefan Parkman and Nicholas McGegan.
Mark holds degrees in Musicology and Music Theory from Cambridge and Yale and is grateful to the Mellon Foundation, the Richard Stapley Educational Trust and Hugh Porter Scholarship for their support throughout his studies. Highlights of the upcoming season including conducting the University of London Symphony Orchestra, a residency at Aldeburgh with counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo and a semi-staged performance of Handel’s Theodora.
