Colin Currie makes conducting debut with the BBC Philharmonic

© Frances Marshall

On Saturday 29 November, Colin will make his conducting debut with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert at The Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

Opening the concert, Colin will lead the orchestra in Steve Reich’s large-scale Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards, before presenting John Adams’ adrenaline-fuelled new work Frenzy: a short symphony.

Colin will then conduct Gabriella Smith’s unique orchestral work f(x)=sin²x-1/x, before returning to Reich for the composer’s bold and expansive centrepiece The Four Sections.

Looking ahead, Colin will conduct Reich’s Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards and The Four Sections again in October 2026, as well as Reich’s Three Movements for Orchestra, this time with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The concert will be part of the composer’s 90th birthday celebrations, and joined by The National’s guitarist Bryce Dessner. Tickets on sale now.

Colin Currie and The King's Singers perform at Kings Place

© Frances Marshall

Following his concerts with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra this week, Colin reunites with The King’s Singers for a concert at Kings Place, London, in a continuation of their project that debuted at the Edinburgh International Festival in August.

The programme will feature the London premiere of Sir James MacMillan’s A Bunch o’ Craws, alongside arrangements of Missy Mazzoli's A Year of Our Burning and Roderick Williams' Death be not proud, as well as Steve Martland's Street Songs, which was written for The King's Singers.

“A remarkable collaboration between Scotland’s international percussion superstar and the superb a cappella sextet… the group’s golden-toned, immaculately-pitched ensemble sound remains peerless.”

— The Herald ★★★★★

Watch Colin discuss his collaboration with The King’s Singers ahead of their performance at the Edinburgh International Festival earlier this year:

Colin Currie returns to play/direct the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

© Frances Marshall

This week, Colin returns to the Scottish Chamber Orchestra - this time to play/direct the ensemble across two concerts at Edinburgh’s The Queen's Hall, and at Glasgow’s City Hall.

The programme will open with Joe Duddell’s Snowblind, a work close to Colin that was written specifically for him, receiving it’s world premiere over 20 years ago in Inverness in 2002.

Read more about how Colin utilises the keyboard percussion instruments in a feature with SCO.

Colin will then perform the UK premiere of Helen Grime’s River, a two-movement work that contrasts “flow and energy” with “moments of glassy stasis“ inspired the characteristics of a river. No stranger to Grime’s works, Colin has previously performed the world premiere of Grime’s Percussion Concerto alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019.

Read more about Helen Grime’s River.

The concert will then culminate in performances of two minimalist masterpieces: Steve Reich’s Runner and Double Sextet, directed by Colin.

Earlier this year, Colin and the Colin Currie Group launched a crowdfunding campaign to record Reich’s complete Sextet works, which are planned to be released to mark the composer’s 90th birthday celebrations in 2026.

Watch the trailer for Colin’s SCO concerts below:

Colin Currie Quartet release VR180 performance with ConcertLab

This week, Colin and the Colin Currie Quartet released the first film in a four-part VR180 series with ConcertLab.

Filmed at arm’s reach in Utrecht, “these episodes reveal contemporary percussion from within the circle — not as audience, but as fellow performer.”

Watch the group’s performance of Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet below:

Release Schedule: (One Episode Every Other Day)
1) 19 Oct | Steve Reich — Mallet Quartet
2) 12 Oct | Ben Nobuto — Daily Affirmation (CCQ Premiere)
3) 23 Oct | Steve Reich — Drumming, Part 1
4) 25 Oct | Aileen Sweeney — Starburst (CCQ Premiere)

Colin Currie play-directs world premiere of Erkki-Sven Tüür work

© Frances Marshall

On Friday 10 October, Colin will play-direct the world premiere of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Memoirs for Violin, Percussion and String orchestra at the Two Moors Festival, joined by violinist and Artistic Director Tamsin Waley-Cohen, and the United Strings of Europe. The piece was commissioned by the festival to celebrate their 25th anniversary, with future performances to be announced.

No stranger to Tüür’s works, Colin has previously performed the composer’s Percussion Concerto in Brno in 2015, which was broadcast on national television. Nearly a decade later, Colin and Tamsin approached Tüür to write this new work, as they felt his composing style had a deep understanding of both percussion and string instruments.

In three movements, Tüür explores how memories can mislead us while thinking about the past. The first movement “Shimmer” is about how memories are often idealised and shimmering, but details can no longer be distinguished. This is further developed in the second movement “Misty Mirrors” and leads to the third movement “Dancing Patterns” where “the spirals of memory have carried us into unfamiliar waters, where long-lost images and forgotten scents suddenly rise to the surface from the depths of oblivion”, as Tüür describes the development.

Read more about the work here.

Colin returns to the festival the following day as part of the Colin Currie Quartet, in a programme of Steve Reich and Anna Meredith.

Colin Currie joins Scottish Chamber Orchestra for major European tour and season opening concerts

© Frances Marshall

This September, Colin embarked on a five-city European tour with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev, performing Sir James MacMillan's Veni, Veni, Emmanuel - a landmark percussion concerto that Colin has performed more than 150 times over the course of his career. 

The tour opened at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest (19 Sept) and Sibiu (21 Sept), followed by appearances at Bozar Brussels (25 Sept), Beethovenfest Bonn (26 Sept), and Philharmonie Essen (28 Sept), finally returning home for season opening concerts in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. 

““I now play about 90 per cent of it from memory – it’s a bit like a giant piece of chamber music.””

— The Scotsman

Read more about Colin Currie's performance of the concerto in his interview with The Scotsman.

This tour marks a highlight in Colin’s 2025/26 season which opened with a performance of Kalevi Aho’s percussion concerto Sieidi with the Porto Symphony conducted by John Storgards, and continues with a range of high-profile concerto, chamber and conducting engagements.

Colin Currie makes his debut at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival

© James Glossop

Fresh from a critically acclaimed performance at the Edinburgh International Festival, this week Colin travels across the Atlantic for his highly anticipated debut at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

On Thursday 7 August, Colin will perform in what will be the festival’s first-ever solo percussion recital. The programme will include the wide-ranging repertoire of Kevin Volans’ Asanga, Dani Howard’s Vasa (which Colin recently premiered at London’s Wigmore Hall), Tansy Davies’ Dark Ground, Andy Akiho’s Spiel, Toshio Hosokawa’s Reminiscence, and Rolf Wallin’s Realismos Mágicos.

On Monday 11 August, Colin is joined by New York Philharmonic Associate Principal Percussionist Daniel Druckman, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra Principal Percussionist Gregory Zuber, and Doug Perkins for Steve Reich’s Mallet Quartet, before they unveil the US premiere of a new work by former Santa Fe Young Composer Freya Waley-Cohen: Stone Fruit.

Colin returns to the festival once more on Wednesday 13 August, joining an ensemble of Festival musicians for Artistic Director Marc Neikrug’s World War II–set “play with music,” Through Roses, narrated by Tony Award-winning actor John Rubinstein.

Colin Currie brings new collaboration with The King's Singers to Edinburgh International Festival

© Benjamin Ealovega / James Glossop

This weekend, Colin and The King’s Singers will debut a new collaboration in the opening music event of the Edinburgh International Festival, with a performance at the Queen’s Hall. The concert will feature a brand-new programme for marimba and vocal ensemble, including three commissioned works.

The programme will include Steve Martland’s Street Songs, a work premiered by The King’s Singers in 1997 and revived for this programme, alongside world premiere arrangement’s of Missy Mazzoli’s A Year of Our Burning and Roderick Williams’ Death be not proud, as well as the world premiere of Sir James MacMillan’s A Bunch o’Craws. Colin will also perform Bryce Dessner’s solo marimba work Tromp Miniature.

Listen to Colin discuss what excites him about working with The King’s Singers, the influence of Steve Martland, and the diversity of the programme in an interview with Intermusica: