ABOUT
“When I make music, I have the feeling that I no longer exist.
But what happens to the audience in a concert where there is nobody telling a story?
The audience becomes the story. The musicians, the concert hall, the patterns on the floor, the instruments become the story.
Everyone present becomes the permeating music.”
CONDUCTOR
Oscar Jockel is assistant conductor with the Berliner Philharmoniker for Kirill Petrenko and will be a conducting fellow of the Karajan Academy for two years receiving the “Siemens Conductors Scholarship” as a winner of the conducting competition at the Philharmonie Berlin in October 2021. In addition to assisting the chief conductor in concert and opera, the duties also include conducting his own concert projects together with the academy members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. Also in 2021, Oscar Jockel obtained a position as assistant conductor at the Philharmonie de Paris with the Ensemble intercontemporain and its director Matthias Pintscher.
Oscar Jockel received the Herbert von Karajan Award for his work to date as a composer and conductor, which was presented to him at the 2023 Salzburg Easter Festival. The previous prize winners were the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden (2022), Hilary Hahn (2021), Janine Jansen (2020), Mariss Jansons (2019), Sol Gabetta (2018) and Daniil Trifonov (2017).
In the 2023/24 season, he will follow invitations from the Semperoper Dresden with the Sächsische Staatskapelle, the Berlin Philharmonie with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic, the Tonkünstler Orchestra Vienna, the Gewandhaus with the Sinfonietta Leipzig of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the PKF - Prague Philharmonia, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and the Vienna Concert-Verein. Last season he made guest appearances at the Salzburg Easter Festival in a production at the Felsenreitschule as well as at the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden at the International Shostakovich Days in Gohrisch, the opening concert of the International Bruckner Festival 2022 in Linz, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Ensemble intercontemporain in Paris.
As a conductor or conducting assistant, among others to Sir Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Reinhard Goebel or Hartmut Haenchen, he has already worked with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Klangforum Wien, the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen or the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra.
In the 2018 Järvi Conducting Academy in Estonia he was taught by Paavo Järvi as well as his father, Neeme Järvi, and in 2019 he received a Conducting Seminar Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Andris Nelsons and Stefan Asbury. After winning an Aspen Conducting Prize at the Aspen Music Festival in the summer of 2021 as a Conducting Fellow of the American Conducting Academy, he received a re-invitation for 2022.
2021 he has been accepted as conducting fellow into the Forum Dirigieren of the Deutsche Musikrat.
Oscar Jockel has been announced the first composer in residence at the Brucknerhaus Linz for the season 2020/2021 composing for a wide variety of formations. In 2019 he won the first prize of the Organ Composition Competition by the Bruckner Privatuniversität and Brucknerhaus Linz, and obtained a commission from the International Stiftung Mozarteum for his opera Lob des Schattens, which has been staged in Salzburg. In 2021 Jockel became a winner of the Franco Donatoni Composition Competition in Milano.
At the moment he is creating works for the Berliner Philharmonie, the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, the Wiener Musikverein, the Quatuor Diotima (Brucknerhaus Linz), a music theater work as well as a collaboration work with Westbam (Salzburger Osterfestspiele & Mendelssohn-Orchesterakademie des Gewandhauses Leipzig).
Previous commissions range from works for solo instruments and sound installations to orchestral works such as for the German Federal Youth Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz or for the Camerata Salzburg.
In the past years he was a lecturer at the liberal arts university Salzburg College teaching composition and was invited as visiting lecturer for algorithmic composition at the Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad in February 2019.
COMPOSER
Born in Regensburg in 1995, Oscar Jockel lives in Bretstein, a remote Austrian mountain village from the 13th century, and in Berlin. Jockel received his first musical education with the Regensburger Domspatzen under Domkapellmeister Roland Büchner and studied at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg (1. Diploma, Bachelor and Master) composition with Achim Bornhöft and conducting with Reinhard Goebel (Early Music), Bruno Weil (Romantic and Opera), Johannes Kalitzke (New Music), Herbert Böck and Karl Kamper (Choral Conducting) and music theory (Bachelor) as well as composition with Klaus Lang at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz. Oscar Jockel deepened his studies in Paris at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in conducting with Alain Altinoglu as well as in composition with Frédéric Durieux.
He received scholarships and prizes from the German Parliament Deutscher Bundestag as a cultural junior ambassador in the United States, from the city of Regensburg, from the Kai-Uwe von Hassel-Stiftung as well as from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.