CV Armin Klaes

Armin Klaes was born in Koblenz, Germany.

Initially, he studied school music for secondary school level at the Cologne Music Academy. Simultaneously he studied Historic Performance Practice and Ensemble Conducting with Professor Dr. Günter Kehr and Harmonic Theory, Counterpoint and Composition with Professor Jürg Baur at the Cologne Music Academy. He also achieved a degree in a basic course in Musical Sciences at the University of Cologne.

Afterwards, he studied with Professor Reinhard Peters at the Folkwang-University in Essen, Germany, where he graduated in 1987 as a conductor with the degree of "Künstlerische Reifeprüfung"(Diploma of Arts).
In the same year he was the first conductor to be awarded the "Folkwang-Förderpreis" for outstanding artistic performance.

He then attended Master Courses in Conducting with Professor Heinz Roegner in Weimar, Germany and Professor Karl Österreicher in Vienna, Austria.

His conducting activity focuses on the one hand on orchestral conducting from small ensembles for Old and New Music to symphonic works and stage productions (mainly German and Italian repertoire) and on the other on choral conducting from a-cappella to the big oratories.

As early as 1987 he founded the "Kölner Konzertgemeinschaft" (The Cologne Concert Artists' Society) together with music students from eleven German music universities and directed their work and concert tours for many years.

In 1985 he became chief conductor of the Mannesmann Symphonic Orchestra and in 1990 chief conductor of the Chamber Orchestra in Dinslaken, Germany.

In the summer of 1992 he gave up both ensembles in order to fully concentrate on his main work in Duisburg, Essen and Marl, Germany:
- He became head of the Music Department at the Music and Arts Center of the Gerhard-Mercator-University in Duisburg (including conducting the University Chorus and Orchestra). Since March, 2007, he is a faculty member at the recently merged University Duisburg-Essen, responsible for developing the department "Music and Music Management" at the newly founded Institute for Optional Studies (IOS).
- He became Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Marl Musical Society (oratorio choir, symphonic orchestra),
- He became a lecturer on Conducting at the Folkwang-University in Essen.

In addition, he was Guest Conductor with several symphonic orchestras and concert choruses and and conducted numerous concerts in Germany and abroad, e.g. in France, Austria, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Greece and the USA, and took part in several productions for CD and TV.

As Guest Conductor he worked with renowned orchestras such as the Bochum Symphonic Orchestra, the New Philharmonic Orchestra Westphalia, the Thüringen-Philharmonic Orchestra Gotha-Suhl, the Volgograd Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wuppertal Symphonic Orchestra, also the Orchestre Filharmonia Veneta, Orquestra Simfonica del Vallés/Sabadelle, the Philharmonia Hungarica and State Opera of Izmir Orchestra, the Bergische Symphonic Orchestra Remscheid/ Solingen and the European Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra.

He was also Guest Conductor of outstanding concert choirs such as the Munich Bach-Choir and the Chamber Choir of the Franz-Liszt-Hochschule in Weimar).

He is the founder and Artistic Director of the West German Concert Choir. Since 2000, he has united members of numerous choruses from all over Germany in this Choir for special concert tours.