Roderick Cox

Winner of the 2018 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, the Berlin-based American conductor Roderick Cox makes his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut this week. Highlights of his 2021-22 season include debuts with the BBC Philharmonic, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Seattle and New World symphonies, and the symphony orchestras of Malmö, Kristiansand, and Lahti, as well as a return to the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In recent seasons he has made debuts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Dresdner Philharmonie, Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Cleveland Orchestra (at its Blossom Music Festival), and Dallas Symphony Orchestra, as well as returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Aspen Music Festival Chamber Orchestra. This season, Mr. Cox returns to the Opéra National de Montpellier for Verdi’s Rigoletto, having made an acclaimed symphonic debut there last season. His opera engagements in recent seasons have included important debuts at Houston Grand Opera (Bizet’s Pêcheurs de Perles) and San Francisco Opera (Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia), as well as recording Jeanine Tesori’s Blue with Washington National Opera. With a passion for education and diversity and inclusion in the arts, Mr. Cox started the Roderick Cox Music Initiative (RCMI) in 2018—a project that provides scholarships for young musicians of color from underrepresented communities, allowing them to pay for instruments, music lessons, and summer camps. Mr. Cox and the RCMI will be featured in the upcoming documentary Conducting Life, by filmmaker Diane Moore, which follows the young conductor’s musical and personal journey over the course of seven years. Born in Macon, Georgia, Roderick Cox attended the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University and then Northwestern University, graduating with a master’s degree in 2011. He was awarded the Robert J. Harth Conducting Prize from the Aspen Music Festival in 2013 and has held fellowships with the Chicago Sinfonietta as part of their Project Inclusion program and at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he was a David Effron Conducting Fellow. In 2016 Mr. Cox was appointed associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä for three seasons, having previously served as assistant conductor for a year.

Last updated: November 8, 2021