Nelsons has been Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra since 2008 enjoying a critically acclaimed first few seasons. With CBSO he is undertaking major tours worldwide, including regular appearances at such summer festivals as Lucerne Festival, BBC Proms and Berliner Festspiele. Furthermore, they have an exciting recording collaboration with Orfeo International: Nelsons and the CBSO are working towards releasing all orchestral works by Tchaikovsky and all those by Richard Strauss, the first disc of which was praised by The Times as: “one of the most sumptuous and refined accounts of ‘Ein Heldenleben’ ever put on to disc”. Further releases include works by Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Mahler. Over half of Nelsons’ recordings have been recognised with a Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik and, in October 2011, Andris Nelsons will receive the prestigious ECHO Klassik of the German Phono Academy in the category "Conductor of the Year" for his recording with CBSO of Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ and ‘Symphony of Psalms’ which was released in 2010. For audiovisual recordings, he has an exclusive agreement with Unitel GmbH.
Born in Riga in 1978 into a family of musicians, Andris Nelsons began his career in music as a trumpeter in the Latvian National Opera Orchestra and has also won many prizes for his singing. He was recipient of the prestigious Latvian Grand Music Award for outstanding achievement in music in 2001 and, after graduating in the same year, he went to St. Petersburg to study conducting with Professor Alexander Titov. He has been studying privately with Mariss Jansons since 2002 and completed his tenure as Principal Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Herford, Germany, in 2009. From 2003-2007 he was Music Director of the Latvian National Opera.
