Alexander Gordon Shelley (born 8 October 1979) is an Echo Music Prize-winning English conductor. He is currently music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, as well as principal associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Artistic and Music Director Designate of Artis—Naples and the Naples Philharmonic. Shelley was the unanimous winner of the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition. From 2009 to 2017 he was chief conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. He was also artistic director of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen's Echo and Deutscher Gründerpreis winning "Zukunftslabor". He is recipient of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Background
The son of the pianists Howard Shelley OBE and Hilary Macnamara, Shelley learned piano from his mother and cello from his grandmother. In 1992, he won a music scholarship to Westminster School from The Hall School Hampstead. He studied cello with Timothy Hugh, Steven Doane and Johannes Goritzki at the Royal College of Music and at the Robert Schumann Hochschule, Düsseldorf respectively. Master-classes with Mstislav Rostropovich, Janos Starker and Aldo Parisot led him to France, Italy and North America. He was a member of the World Orchestra for Peace during the 2003 tour with Valery Gergiev. He studied conducting with Professor Thomas Gabrisch in Düsseldorf and worked closely with Yan-Pascal Tortelier as his assistant conductor, among others with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.
Early career
In 2001, while still studying in Düsseldorf, he founded the Schumann Camerata, a chamber orchestra with whom he subsequently performed over 80 concerts, including a substantial tour of Russia, with performances in Moscow, Kazan, Simbirsk, Samara, Saratov, Volgograd and Astrachan. In 2005, he won first prize in the 2005 Leeds Conductors Competition, with the press describing him as "the most exciting and gifted young conductor to have taken this highly prestigious award. His conducting technique is immaculate, everything crystal clear and a tool to his inborn musicality." In the same year, Shelley conceived the "440Hz" project, a series of concerts involving prominent German television and stage personalities, to attract young adults to the concert hall. Guest artists have included Konrad Beikircher, Götz Alsmann&Band, Wise Guys (band), Blank & Jones, BASTA, Ensemble Six, Miki, Curse, Reen, Mellow Mark, Ono, Chima, Marlies Petersen and Ralf Bauer.
In 2009, Shelley became Artistic Director of the Zukunftslabor project of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen with whom he went on to win the 2012 Echo Klassik award in the category of Youth Engagement.
Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra
In September 2009, Shelley was named the youngest ever Chief Conductor of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, with an initial contract of four years. In 2011, his contract was extended to 2017.
During his tenure the orchestra dramatically increased their international touring, travelling to China, Italy, the Czech Republic and Austria. Live recordings of their performances in Vienna's Musikverein and Prague's Smetana Hall were released on Colosseum Records.
For nine consecutive years Shelley conducted and presented Nuremberg's ‘Klassik Open Air’ concerts - Europe's largest annual classical concerts - performing to a combined audience of over 500,000. His final concert was attended by over 80,000 people.
He concluded his Nuremberg tenure at the close of the 2016–2017 season.
Shelley's first album for Deutsche Grammophon, with Daniel Hope and the Stockholm Philharmonic, was released in September 2014. Shelley's second album for Deutsche Grammophon, a recording of an expanded version of Peter and the Wolf with Germany's National Youth Orchestra featuring Die Toten Hosen singer Campino (in the German version) and rock singer AliceCooper (in the English version), was awarded the Echo Klassik prize in 2016.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
In January 2015, after several years of collaborations as a guest conductor, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra named Shelley its principal associate conductor, curating an annual series in London's Cadogan Hall, as well as touring nationally and internationally with the orchestra.
Shelley has focused on a variety of themes in his Cadogan Hall programming, including: