British conductor Jonathan Nott will lead the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester on its extraordinary Easter Tour 2015. For the second time with the GMJO, after a successful Summer Tour in 2009, the current principal conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and recently appointed Music and Artistic Director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande will conduct Gustav Mahler’s monumental Symphony No. 2, an absolute first in the history of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester as it is the only Mahler symphony that the orchestra has never yet performed.

For this, both Jonathan Nott and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester will welcome soprano Chen Reiss and alto Christa Mayer, as well as various local choirs of international standing. The Easter Tour 2015 will take the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester to the Festival de Pâcques in Aix-en-Provence (concert with the Choeur Régional Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur), to Ljubljana’s Cankarjev Dom (Slovenian Chamber Choir and Megaron Chamber Choir), to Vienna’s Musikverein (Wiener Singverein), to Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle (EuropaChorAkademie), to Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música (Coro Nacional de España), and to Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana (Orfeó Català and Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música Catalana).

Following the successful tradition every two years, the GMJO Easter Tour will begin with a residency at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon where, in addition to a performance of Mahler’s second symphony with the Gulbenkian Choir, the GMJO will present two exclusive concerts under the baton of assistant conductor Leo McFall: a first concert with works by Webern, Bartók, and Dvorák (including the Wind Serenade in D minor and the Symphony No. 8); and a second featuring a selection from Prokofiev’sRomeo and Juliet and a concert performance Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle with mezzo-soprano Elena Zhidkova, baritone Gábor Bretz, and also the participation of Portuguese actress Sofia Sá da Bandeira.