Welcome to the website for British conductor James Lowe.

James Lowe will be the new Music Director of the Spokane Symphony from the 2019/20 season. His work as a conductor has ranged over five continents including collaboration with orchestras in the UK and Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA. He is currently Chief Conductor of the Vaasa City Orchestra, Finland. Passionately committed to the belief that classical music is for everyone, he balances his conducting schedule with his work to engage new audiences and a long-standing commitment to youth music.

DIARY, 2019/2020 Season

AUGUST 2019

  • 9th – Musique Cordiale International Festival, Eglise de Seillans 19:00

    • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Sinfonia Concertante KV.364 (Collete Overdijk – violin, Ian Anderson, viola)
    Arnold Schoenberg – Verklärte Nacht
    Franz Schubert – Symphony No. 5, D185 in B flat

  • 13th – Musique Cordiale International Festival, Fayence Theatre de Verdure 21:00

    • Felix Mendelssohn – Hebrides Overture
    Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto (Judith de Haas – violin)
    Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No.6 in F major, Op. 68, Pastoral

  • 16th – Musique Cordiale International Festival, Eglise de Seillans 19:00

    • Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Concerto fro Flute and Harp KV.299, in C major (Trond Brekka – flute, Michela Zanoni – harp)
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No. 35 in D, KV.385, Haffner

 

SEPTEMBER 2019

  • 1st – West of Scotland Youth Orchestra, City Halls, Glasgow 19:00

    • Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.1 in D major

  • 14th – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00  Inaugural concert as Music Director

    • John Adams – Short Ride in a Fast Machine
    George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue (William Wolfram, piano)
    George Gershwin – I Got Rhythm
    Aaron Copland – Symphony No.3

  • 15th Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for September 14th

  • 1st – 20th – Collegium Musicum Basel, Musical Theater Basel, 19:30

    • Gioacchino Rossini – Overture to the Barber of Seville
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Horn Concerto No.4 in E flat KV.495 (Felix Klieser, horn)
    Luigi Cherubini – Sonata No. 2 for Horn and Strings (Felix Klieser, horn)
    Felix Mendelssohn – Symphony No.4 in A majo, Op.90r, Italian

  • 26th – Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Hall 19:00

    • Lauch concert for the book and recording of The Bluebird
    Jonne Valtonen – Lintu Sininin “The Bluebird” – (Nazig Azezian – piano, Jussi Makkonen cello)

 

OCTOBER 2019

  • 5th – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Dimitri Shostakovich – Selections from Suite for Variety Orchestra No.1 (Jazz Suite No.2)
    Erik Satie – Gymnopédies No. 1 and 3
    Joaquin Rodrigo – Concierto de Aranjuez (Robert Bellnic – guitar)
    Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No.40 in G minor KV. 550

  • 6th – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for October 6th

 

NOVEMBER 2019

  • 31st – Vaasa City Orchestra, Ritz Cinema, 19:00

    • Screening of Nosferatu with the music of Hans Erdmann

  • 19th-23rd – Teaching at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki

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  • 28th – Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Hall 19:00

    • Bravo! Jubilee concert
    Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.4 in G major arranged for Chamber Orchestra by Ian Farrington (Virva Puumala – Soprano)

 

DECEMBER 2019

  • 21st – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Holiday Pops with Vanessa Williams

  • 22nd – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 14:00

    • Holiday Pops with Vanessa Williams

  • 28th – 31st – Viennese Concerts with Opera North

 

JANUARY 2020

  • 5th – 11th Conducting workshop with Johannes Schlaefli, Sofia, Bulgaria

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  • 23rd – Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Hall 19:00

    • Programme TBC

 

FEBRUARY 2020

  • 8th – Spokane Symphony with the Spokane Symphony Chorale, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Claude Debussy – Nocturnes
    Henri Tomasi – Trumpet Concerto (Allen Vizzutti, trumpet)
    Maurice Ravel – Daphnis and Chloé Suites 1 and 2

  • 9th Spokane Symphony with the Spokane Symphony Chorale, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for February 9th

  • 20th – Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Hall 19:00

    • Concert with soloists from the Kuula Institute

 

MARCH 2020

  • 13th Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Orchestra, Vaasa City Hall 19:00

    • Programme TBC

  • 28th – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Igor Stravinsky – Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss
    Sergei Rachmaninoff – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Joyce Yang, piano)
    Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Symphony No.6 in B minor, Pathétique

  • 29th Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for March 28th

 

APRIL 2020

  • 18th – Spokane Symphony , Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Richard Wagner – Ride of the Valkyries
    Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Violin Concerto in D major, Op.35 (Mateusz Wolski, violin)
    Anton Bruckner – Symphony No.9 in D minor

  • 19th – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for April 18th

 

MAY 2020

  • 2nd – Spokane Symphony with the Spokane Symphony Chorale, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 20:00

    • Gustav Mahler – Symphony No.2 in C minor, Resurrection
    Soprano – Sarah Schafer

  • 3rd – Spokane Symphony, Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, Spokane WA. 15:00

    • Programme as for May 2nd

 

Blog feed

“Where I quite like to be”

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what it is I find so magnetic about Finland. For a start, it’s cold: My freezer is cold, humming away at -18c to keep my pizzas crispy. In one Helsinki winter I’ve stumbled out of Urkki’s [1] into -26c. That really hardens your ice cubes, I can tell you. It’s also dark. Helsinki in midwinter gets less than six hours of sunlight a day. Up in Rovaniemi and points north they get little or none during the winter months. The language is pretty much impenetrable: It glories in fifteen cases, a vocabulary based not on anything Indo-European but on Uralic, from the depths of the Ural Read more >
Video

Hafliði Hallgrímsson - Herma

Click to watch (Jacob Shaw: cello / James Lowe: conductor)