Biography
Internationally acclaimed conductor Mark Laycock has appeared with orchestras of London, Paris, Moscow, Kiev, Montréal, Mexico City, Seoul, and Taipei, among others. Maestro Laycock’s recent engagements have included those with the Jaener Phlharmonie, Neubrandenburg Philharmonie, Bayerische KammerPhilharmonie, the Wiener KammerOrchester, Festival Strings Lucerne, and the Deutsches Nationaltheater and Staatskapelle Weimar, as well as his third consecutive appearances with the Bochumer Symphoniker in Germany and the Georges Enescu Philharmonic in Bucharest, where he returns this May. The 2008-09 season included his first appearances in Finland and with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra in Norway, as well as with the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart. In July 2009 he returned to the United States to conduct a gala concert of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and in the summer of 2010 will again return to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra in a program featuring Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in addition to conducting several full productions of Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale” with Opera New Jersey.
At age 21, Maestro Laycock made his conducting début with the Philadelphia Orchestra, returning to lead the Orchestra on numerous occasions. His multiple re-engagements also include those with L’Orchestre Symphonique d’Montréal, the Philharmonia Orchestra of London at Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican Centre, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in St. Paul as well as on tour. As a participant of “Project Uplift,” in June 2005, he traveled to Ekaterinburg, Russia to donate his services for a performance of the Verdi Requiem with the Sverdlovsk State Philharmonic. The 2006-2007 season included his first appearance in Asia, conducting the TJB Orchestra Daejeon, with an immediate re-engagement and invitation to return to Korea to conduct the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra at the Seoul Arts Center.
Maestro Laycock holds the distinction of being the first non-Russian ever invited to appear at the Moscow Autumn Festival, conducting a program at the famed Tchaikovsky Hall. He also conducted the inaugural concert at the new Cairo Opera House in 1988, as well as the sold-out first concert of classical music ever made open to the public in Amman, Jordan. This sequence of events was chronicled in “Classical Caravan,” an Emmy Award-winning television documentary produced by NJN public television. His début in Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes in 2001 resulted in an immediate invitation to return the following summer to teach a week-long master class to Mexico’s regional conductors.
Maestro Laycock began conducting at the age of 16, advancing his studies at the St. Louis Conservatory of Music, and from 1975 to 1979 studied as a violist under the tutelage of the Curtis String Quartet in Philadelphia. Maestro Laycock was a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, and the winner of the Leopold Stokowski Memorial Conducting Competition in association with the Philadelphia Orchestra. From 1995-1998 Maestro Laycock was also Music Director of Orchestra London Canada and was subsequently appointed Associate Conductor of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
As a published composer, his works have been performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Symphony Orchestra, Canton (OH) Symphony Orchestra, and the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, among others. Having conducted over 1,800 works, Maestro Laycock has developed a reputation for being able to step in at the last minute, having been called upon at very short notice to conduct programs that have included Brahms’ 1st and 4th Symphonies (conducted from memory), Orff’s Carmina Burana, Strauss’ monumental Ein Heldenleben, and a full production of “Carmen” without any rehearsal and to great critical and audience acclaim.
Maestro Laycock was Music Director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra for more than 20 years, transforming that orchestra from a small chamber orchestra into a full and critically acclaimed professional symphony orchestra awarded Citations of Excellence for two consecutive years from the State Arts Council of New Jersey for “exhibiting the highest standards of artistic excellence.” Mark Laycock and his family now make their home in Berlin.
