Nicholas DeMaison | Conductor
Co-artistic Director
Since Chicago Magazine first described his early opera projects as “Chicago’s most daring and avant-garde” in 2010, Nicholas DeMaison has continued to prove himself as one of the most capable conductor/composers in the young generation of multi-talented musicians working to reimagine classical institutions and genres.
In recent seasons he has lead the premiere productions of Pauline Oliveros’ The Nubian Word for Flowers (which he assembled posthumously for performance - ICE/Roulette), Nathan Davis’ Hagoromo (ICE/AOP/BAM Next Wave), Mikael Karlsson’s The Echo Drift (ICE/AOP/Prototype Festival), Mojiao Wang’s Encounter (Beijing Modern Music Festival), James Ilgenfritz’s The Ticket That Exploded, Charles Fussell’s The Astronaut’s Tale, and of newly commissioned orchestral works by Miya Masaoka, Zach Layton, Erica Ball, Eli Greenhoe and others. The US premiere of his arrangement of Milhaud’s La Mère Coupable by OnSite Opera & ICE was lauded as “a natural fit”. He has been a regular collaborator with ICE, ECCE, American Opera Projects, and previously worked with Giants are Small, Ensemble Sospeso, Talea Ensemble, and Opera Cabal among others.
In 2013, he was invited to create a new orchestral, choral and chamber music program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and in that context has had the opportunity to build a comprehensive performance program from the ground up that combines a classical pedagogy with a forward-looking embrace of technology and performance practice, and to collaborate regularly with the world-renowned Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) to realize a variety of new hybrid works for ensembles, voices, and new technologies.