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 was assistant conductor with the Berliner Philharmoniker for Kirill Petrenko and 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.
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 2025/26 season, he will accept invitations to the Philharmonie Berlin for the Berlin Philharmonic's Strom Festival, to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, to the Concertgebouw Amsterdam with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, to the Prague Philharmonia, to the Elbphilharmonie with the junge norddeutsche philharmonie, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra at the closing concert of the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Munich Radio Orchestra with the Regensburger Domspatzen, the Darmstadt State Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, and the Brussels Philharmonic.
He is also conducting a production (directed by Karoline Gruber) of Alban Berg's monumental Lulu at the New National Theatre Tokyo with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Nikikai Opera Foundation.
In recent seasons, he has made guest appearances at the Salzburg Easter Festival 2023, at the Semperoper with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra at the Isarphilharmonie, at the Berlin Philharmonie with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, at the Vienna Konzerthaus with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Camerata Salzburg, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, and the Tonkünstler Orchestra Vienna.
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 was appointed the first Composer in Residence at the Brucknerhaus Linz for the 2020/21 season. Also in 2021, Jockel was a winner of the Franco Donatoni Composition Competition in Milan and won first prize in the 2019 Bruckner Composition Competition for Organ.
He is currently working on a commission from the Berliner Philharmoniker in collaboration with Fennesz (electronics & guitar) for the large hall of the Berlin Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam with the Netherlands Radio Symphony and Choir, Elina Vähälä (violin), the ARD Music Competition, the Orchestra Academy of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, and a solo work for pianist Filippo Gorini.
Previous composition commissions range from works for solo instruments to sound installations and orchestral works, for example for the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Musikverein, the Quatuor Diotima, the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Ars Electronica in Linz, the Handel Festival in Halle, and the International Mozarteum Foundation with his opera Lob des Schattens.
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 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.