New Dutch Academy Chamber Orchestra & Simon Murphy
Biography New Dutch Academy Chamber Orchestra & Simon Murphy
Simon Murphy
Educated by the leading lights of the Dutch early music movement, the young Australian/Dutch viola player and conductor Simon Murphy (Sydney, 1973) gained his initial experience performing in the lead- ing Dutch and European period instrument ensembles such as the Orchestra of the 18th Century, and was also the Viola player of The Amsterdam String Quartet, before going on to establish his own internationally operating orchestra, The New Dutch Academy (NDA). Under Murphy’s leadership, the NDA has subsequently succeeded to attract awards and much praise from both the media and musical establishment for its fresh and vibrant approach to early music repertoire, performance and presentation. Murphy is known for his energetic and infectiously enthusiastic approach to music making as well as for his multidisciplinary projects and programs giving new insights into the music, arts and culture of the 18th century. He has done much in reviving previously ignored symphonic music, especially from the mid 18th century musical centres of Mannheim and the Netherlands, and has also been recently successful in completing the reconstruction of Bach’s own cello – known as the Violoncello Piccolo or Viola Pomposa – an instrument upon which he also regularly performs as a soloist.
Murphy obtained his undergraduate degree in Fine Arts, Musicology and Performance at the University of Sydney, before moving to the Netherlands where he studied and worked with the likes of Alda Stuurop, Gustav Leonhardt and Frans Brüggen. As a conductor and chamber soloist, Murphy has performed across Europe, America, Asia and Australia. His work is documented on more than 50 CDs.
Simon Murphy regularly co-operates with European radio and television for live concert broadcasts and documentaries, working with, amongst others, AVRO, NPS, RNW, Hessischer Rundfunk, MDR, Radio Deutschland and RAI as well as with the EBU for world-wide live simulcasts. Murphy has directed concert performances at the major concert halls at home in the Netherlands including the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, De Doelen Rotterdam and Vredenburg Utrecht, and, internationally, at the major European music festivals, including at the Festivals of Amsterdam, Utrecht,The Hague, Brussels, Gent, Brühl, Halle, Weimar, Bad Arolsen, Potsdam and Rome.
He regularly works together with the Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs representing the Netherlands and Dutch Cultural Heritage internationally. In this role he has conducted the opening concerts for Dutch Music Month in Sydney (2006) and Dutch Music Week in Brussels (2004), and for other major representational events such as the official opening concert for the State Visit of Her Majesty Queen Beatrix to Italy in the presidential palace in Rome, the Palazzo Quirinale, which was also broadcast live on radio and TV.
Murphy has been awarded industry prizes for his performing and recording work, including the Edison for his and the NDA’s first recording of early Mannheim symphonies.
Alongside his conducting work, Simon Murphy is a committed educator. He has been a guest baroque violin/viola teacher at many leading institutions and has presented masterclasses, workshops, scholarly lectures and lecture- recitals on tours through Europe, Asia, Russia, Scandinavia and most recently the U.S.A.
The Chamber Orchestra of The New Dutch Academy
The award winning New Dutch Academy (NDA) is the international Dutch platform form for 18th century music and culture form for 18th century music and culture and is comprised of the new generation of leading international early music specialist performers. With both its international orchestra and chamber soloists under the leadership of the founder of the NDA, the Australian/Dutch conductor and viola player Simon Murphy, the NDA has attracted much interest from audiences and the international press for its exciting performance style fresh approach to early music ever since its establishment in 2002. In particular, the NDA has won praise for shedding new light on the richness of the 18th century music culture, for example by innovative programming – bring- ing exciting, newly found 18th century onto the concert podium – and through the NDA’s multidisciplinary projects, connecting music with other 18th century art forms.
Recent concert tours have seen the orchestra perform throughout mainland Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Canada, the U.S., Asia and Australia.
From its base in The Hague, the NDA explores the music and culture of the 18th century with the combination of research and performance at its heart. The NDA musicians are from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the US. The NDA performs exclusively on authentic instruments.
Through its own concert series and its annual multidisciplinary NDA festival the NDA maintains a busy schedule of performances at home in the Netherlands, where newly discovered works from the NDA research projects are presented for the first time.The NDA has performed at all of the leading halls in the Netherlands, from the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) to De Doelen (Rotterdam) and Vredenburg (Utrecht). Internationally, the NDA has performed at the leading inter- national festivals, including the Holland Festival of Early Music Utrecht, the Festival of Flanders, the Roma Europa Festival (Italy), Potsdam Festspiele, the Mitte Europa Festival (Germany and Czech Republic), the Brezice Festival (Slovenia) and the Sacharov Festival (Russia), the Händel Festspiele in Halle, the Thüringer Bachwoche in Weimar and at the Nothern Lights Festival in Norway. Recently the NDA was involved in a series of lectures and performances at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
NDA concerts have been broadcast across the world by the EBU and the NDA has worked further with, amongst others, Radio Netherlands Wereldomroep, AVRO, NPS, Deutschland Funk, Hessische Rundfunk, RAI, Klara and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to achieve special radio concert broadcasts and documentary programmes with new 18th century repertoire.
The NDA works closely with the Royal Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a cultural ambassador on projects that celebrate historical cultural relationships and which foster international cultural understanding and exchange. Recently the NDA performed rediscovered Dutch and Italian Baroque music in the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome for Her Majesty Queen Beatrix and the President of Italy during the Queen’s State Visit to Italy. In 2006 the NDA celebrated the 400 year relationship between the Netherlands and Australia, giving special concerts, broadcasts, master-classes and workshops in both countries. In 2009, at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry, the NDA opened the cultural olympiad in Vancouver, Canada with performances of specially selected 17th and 18th century Dutch repertoire.
The NDA recordings also have been enthusiastically received. The first NDA CD (PentaTone) looking at the birth of the symphony, featuring early works of the Mannheim masters Stamitz and Richter, immediately won an Edison Music Award. “Murphy and his orchestra bring the melodic figures and rhetorical effects in the symphonies of Franx Xaver Richter and Johann Stamitz to life with a fantastic flair – energizing performances of this music ... daring and full of character” according to the Haagsche Courant. “Murphy makes the music of the Mannheim masters come alive – dancing, swinging ... Finally the Mannheimers sound like they should – the of joy the new, the excitement of the sense of discovery, the euphoric rush of a Mannheim skyrocket!” (Parool, the Netherlands) “One of the most interesting musical projects of the moment – exploring one of the fundamental facets of music – the symphony.” (CD Compact, Spain)
