Aaron Cassidy’s work as a conductor is stylistically diverse, encompassing both contemporary and historical repertoire across chamber, orchestral, operatic, and choral settings, including leading many dozens of world premieres.

Notable recent performances include an Ann Cleare portrait concert with Musikfabrik in the Großer Saal of the Berlin Philharmonie for Musikfest Berlin (Berliner Festspiele); a performance at MaerzMusik with ensemble mosaik of works by Laura Bowler, Sara Glojnarić, and Sergej Newski; conducting ELISION in the premiere of his own Siemens Foundation-commissioned Piano Concerto, alongside the Australian premiere of Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus by Liza Lim for the New Music Days festival of the Melbourne Recital Centre; recording three works by Turgut Erçetin at the WDR Funkhaus in Cologne for the Musikfabrik im WDR series; and a monthlong engagement as conductor and Musical Director for the premiere of Ann Cleare’s opera The Little Lives at the Munich Biennale. 

Current season highlights include several projects with longtime collaborators ELISION, including world premieres from Richard Barrett and Mary Bellamy, as well as the Australian premieres of Liza Lim’s Speak, Be Silent and his own Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991) at the Melbourne Recital Centre; a recording of a new work by Turgut Erçetin at Deutschlandfunk in Köln for a forthcoming portrait disc in the Wergo Deutscher Musikrat/Podium Gegenwart series; and a concert with five world premieres and the German premiere of Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing (15.3.1991–20.3.1991) at the Klangbrücken Festival in Hannover. 

He has appeared as a conductor with Ensemble Musikfabrik, ensemble mosaik, ELISION, Schola Heidelberg, Ensemble Proton Bern, International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Interface (for the IEMA Edenkoben International Conducting Mastercourse), the Monochrome Project, and the Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble. From 2008–13 he served as conductor of the Symphony Orchestra and New Music Ensemble at the University of Huddersfield, where he also taught advanced undergraduate and postgraduate orchestral conducting students. He has recorded as a conductor for the Kairos and HCR labels, with a further release forthcoming on Wergo.

While much of his work as a conductor over the last 25 years has revolved around new and experimental music, his earliest training was in choral conducting. He was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Texas Boys Choir while still an undergraduate, and later held positions as Organist & Choir Director while completing undergraduate and PhD degrees in composition in Chicago and Buffalo, also serving as the Assistant Conductor of the University Choir at SUNY Buffalo from 1998–99.

His conducting teachers have included Stephen Alltop, Erik Oña, Ilan Volkov, Zsolt Nagy, and Peter Eötvös.

Video samples are available here.
A repertoire list is available here.

Recent Events—Conducting

ELISION Ensemble
Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Köln
April 8, 2024 
recording work by Turgut Erçetin for Wergo 

with Alex Waite, piano, and Harry Ward, violin
New Music Days Festival, Melbourne Recital Centre, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall
April 20, 2023 / Radio broadcast by ABC Classic FM
works by Liza Lim and Aaron Cassidy

ensemble mosaik
MaerzMusik
Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Große Bühne 
March 23, 2023 / Radio broadcast by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, April 6, 2023
works by Laura Bowler, Sara Glojnarić, Sergej Newski 

Ensemble Musikfabrik
Adventure #9, in cooperation with the Institut für Neue Musik, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, Köln, Germany 
December 16, 2022
works by Simone Cardini, Lucia Kilger, Adrian Laugsch, Carlos Lopes, and Mats Thiersch

ELISION Ensemble
David Li Sound Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
August 26, 2022
recording ‘Self-Portrait, Three Times, Standing’ for Kairos Records

ELISION Ensemble
Melbourne Recital Centre, Australia
August 25, 2022
work by Richard Barrett

Munich Biennale
Musical Director and Conductor
Ensemble Musikfabrik, Christopher Robson, Annette Schönmüller, Peter Brathwaite, Peyee Chen, & John Pumphrey
Utopia, Munich, Germany
May 8–11, 2022
The Little Lives, an opera by Ann Cleare

Ensemble Proton Bern
Protonwerk No.11
Gare du Nord, Basel
Kunstraum Walcheturm, Zürich
March 30–31, 2022
works by Zeno Baldi, Samuel Hvozdík, Sachie Kobayashi, Seong-Hwan Lee, and Ben Lunn

Ensemble Proton Bern
Protonwerk No.11
Dampfzentrale Bern, Switzerland
March 15, 2022
works by Zeno Baldi, Samuel Hvozdík, Sachie Kobayashi, Seong-Hwan Lee, and Ben Lunn