Rüdiger Bohn received his education in piano and conducting at the conservatories of Cologne and Düsseldorf. He won the piano competitions in Florence and Bordeaux. Having attended conducting masterclasses given by Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, he decided to pursue a career as a conductor. He gained experience as musical assistant at the ThéČtre de la Monnaie in Brussels and then as Principal Conductor at the theatres of Basle and Lübeck. He has also served as a guest conductor at the Opéra de Nancy and Darmstadt Staatstheater, at the Munich Biennale, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, and with the orchestras of rai in Rome and Turin, l‘Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, as well as the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.
New music plays an important role in his activity, with performances at the Warsaw Autumn, the Salz-burg Festival, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, and particularly with the Contemporary Opera Berlin, of which he is director and founder. Operas by Henze, Kagel, Battistelli, Feldman, Reimann, Hölsky, Sciarrino, Maxwell Davies and Rihm have been presented there under his baton, with others, including a music-theatre work by Qu Xiao-song (a co-production with the Munich Biennale) and Zender’s Don Quixote (a co-production with the Komische Oper Berlin).
Bohn’s latest invitations (for 2005 and 2006) came from the Korean Symphony Orchestra, the German-Polish ensemble for contemporary music at the Warsaw Autumn, and the Ensemble timf at the Tong-yeong International Music Festival and the Munich Biennale.