Radio concert with Ernst Theis

Born in Upper Austria, Ernst Theis studied in Vienna at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts (now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna).

His beginnings as a conductor lie with the Österreichische Kammersymphoniker, as whose artistic director and managing director from 1991 -2003 he was intensively involved with music of the classical modern period, contemporary music and later also with Viennese classical music. After a stint in 1996 at the Vienna Volksoper, he became Kapellmeister there for almost four years. In the same year he took part in an international conducting competition at the International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt, which he won as 1st prize winner under the chairmanship of Peter Eötvös.

His career then took him to many orchestras at home and abroad such as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the orchestras of the German radio stations Saarbrücken/Kaiserslautern (SR), Cologne (WDR), Munich (BR), Hanover (NDR), Leipzig (MDR) as well as the RSO Vienna (ORF), the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and many others.

Since 2015, Ernst Theis has been an artist of the renowned Japanese agency JAPAN ARTS. In June 2018, he made his debut with the Osaka Symphony Orchestra.

From 2003 to 2013 he was chief conductor of the then initially crisis-ridden Dresden State Operetta. His distinctly conceptual visionary approach to artistic work opened up the recording market for this theater, gradually enabled guest appearances in renowned concert halls such as the Cologne Philharmonie, Hamburg’s Laeisz Hall, and the Brucknerhaus Linz, and led to repeated invitations to renowned festivals such as the Kurt Weill Fest Dessau. In 2011, the political decision was made to build a new theater, and the new theater was opened in December 2016, thus also securing the existence of the house.

One of his central artistic activities is the RadioMusiken project, on which he has worked for many years in collaboration with the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Deutschlandradio Kultur, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk and the German CD label CPO as a recording project both artistically and scientifically. Ernst Theis conducts research at the JAM MUSIC LAB private university in Vienna in the fields of historical and contemporary media music with a focus on the sociology of music. In February 2020, he presented the RadioMusiken project at the tradition-rich Gewandhaus Leipzig together with the MDR Symphony Orchestra to great public acclaim, as reported in the press.

For his CD label CPO he regularly records together with orchestras such as the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Brandenburg State Orchestra (BSOF), the Deutsche Radiophilharmonie Saarbrücken/Kaiserlautern or the RSO Vienna. Today, he successfully collaborates with many orchestras on different continents in an artistic spectrum ranging from early Viennese classical to avant-garde.

His current debuts are with the Symphony Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB).

The American magazine “All About Jazz” writes about the BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin: “Germany, which supports the performing arts to a degree far beyond what is practised here in the United States, has produced a number of world-class big bands as a result of this support. This is one of them.”

The actual birth of the BigBand is considered to be a benefit concert in 2005 featuring the 12 brass players and a percussionist from the German Opera Orchestra. In the beginning, the baritone saxophonist Rolf von Nordenskjöld led the band. In the meantime, jazz trombonist, composer and arranger Manfred Honetschläger provides the right sound. Stars like Katharine Mehrling, Madeline Bell, Lyambiko, Jocelyn B. Smith, Pe Werner, Bill Ramsey, Georgie Fame, Jiggs Whigham, Jeff Cascaro and Richard Galliano have already been guests. In collaboration with General Music Director Donald Runnicles, a crossover concert took place in 2011, as well as the world premiere of the jazz melodrama “The Seduction of Pentheus” by Manfred Honetschläger on the grand stage of the Deutsche Oper with the orchestra and the BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2016, also under the direction of GMD Donald Runnicles and together with actor Ben Becker.

Other highlights included a concert with Paul Kuhn in June 2012, which was the last time he performed with a big band. Also worth mentioning is the concert on the occasion of the Brandenburg Summer Concerts 2014 at the non-opened BER Airport Berlin-Brandenburg with over 2000 visitors. The BigBand celebrated its tenth anniversary in March 2016 with a brilliant concert in front of a sold-out audience with soloists Torsten Goods, Polly Gibbons and trumpeter Till Brönner. In April 2018, the BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin was invited to Warsaw for a three-day guest performance, which included two concerts together with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

Three CDs have been released by monsrecords so far: The CD “Premiere”, released in 2008, was made together with Bill Ramsey, a second was released in 2010 under the title “How long is now?” together with Pascal von Wroblewsky. The third CD, “A Soul Journey”, is a concert recording by RBB from February 2018 with soloists, choir and big band, in which Christian “The Voice” Brückner leads us through the history of soul.