Kevin John Edusei

Kevin John Edusei (born 5 August 1976, Bielefeld) is a German conductor.

Edusei in 2012

Edusei is of mixed Ghanaian and German ancestry, with a Ghanaian physician father, and a German historian, theologian, and pastor mother.[1] His maternal grandmother, Antonie Wingels,[2] was an opera singer with the Theater Bielefeld. He learned piano as a youth, and subsequently changed his musical study interests to percussion.[2] At age 14, he became a percussionist with the youth orchestra in Ostwestfalen-Lippe.[1] He studied percussion, sound engineering, and conducting at the Berlin University of the Arts. He continued his formal academic music studies at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where his teachers included Jac van Steen and Ed Spanjaard.

In the USA, Edusei held a 3-month conducting scholarship at the 2004 Aspen Music Festival, where David Zinman served as a mentor.[1] He was one of three participants in the 2007 Lucerne Festival Academy conducting class, under the guidance of Pierre Boulez and Péter Eötvös. He was a first-prize recipient in the 2008 Dimitri Mitropoulos Conducting Competition.[3] His other conducting mentors have included Marc Albrecht, Kurt Masur, and Sylvain Cambreling.[4]

Beginning in 2004, Edusei served as First Kapellmeister, and subsequently Deputy Generalmusikdirektor, at the Theater Bielefeld. From 2007 to 2011, he was First Kapellmeister at the Theater Augsburg.[5] He also served on the conducting staff of the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar for 2 years.[6]

In May 2013, Edusei was named chief conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, effective with the 2014-2015 season.[6] In June 2016, his Munich contract was extended through the 2021-2022 season.[7] He also served as principal guest conductor of the Konzert Theater Bern,[8] and subsequently became the company's chief conductor as of the 2015-2016 season, with an initial contract of 4 years.[9]

Edusei made his conducting debut at The Proms with the Chineke! Orchestra in August 2017.[10] He conducted the Chineke! Orchestra in its first commercial recording, for the Signum label.[11]

Edusei and his wife have a daughter.[12]