Rolf Beck has been the chorus master and conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra Choir for over twenty years and is the founder and Artistic Director of the Schleswig Holstein Festival Choir Academy. The great oratorios, sacred choral works and also contemporary music form the major part of his repertoire. In one special concert with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra he juxtaposed Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht with Schnittke’s Faust-Kantate. Rolf Beck conducted the first ever performance by a visiting ensemble of Bach’s St John Passion in Israel. Over the past years he has made many very successful guest appearances at festivals such as The White Nights in St Petersburg, Prague Spring, the International Bruckner Festival in Linz, the Festival du Musique in Strasbourg, the Mozartfest in Würzburg, the Herrenchiemsee Festival, the Rheingau Festival, La Folle Journee au Japon and the Beethoven Festival in Warsaw. As the conductor of the Schleswig Holstein Festival Choir Lübeck Rolf Beck has made concert tours to Spain, Russia, Brazil, China and Japan. He has also conducted many orchestras, including the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Kammerorchester Basel, the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Philharmonic, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa. In 2009 Rolf Beck conducted the German premiere of Robert Wilson’s production of Bach’s St John Passion at the Opera House of Kiel. Future projects include concerts with Haydn’s The Creation in Ankara, at the Istanbul Festival, at the Granada Festival and Mozart’s Mass in c-minor at the Tokio Opera City in September 2011. Among the many recordings that Rolf Beck has made, Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus for harmonia mundi, Handel’s Alexander’s Feast, Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle and Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium deserve special mention.