About
Kevin Purcell is one of Australia’s most distinguished and awarded orchestral, opera and musical theatre conductors. He is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Australian Discovery Orchestra, and keeps an active freelance career across the USA and UK. Over more than 35 years he has worked throughout the USA, Europe and Australia as a conductor, composer and arranger.
His training runs through some of the most respected names in the field. He first studied conducting at the Moscow Conservatory with Gennady Rozhdestvensky, then undertook graduate study at the Janáček Academy of Music in the Czech Republic with Otakar Trhlík, before completing a Masters in orchestral conducting at Bard College, New York, under Harold Farberman. He also studied opera conducting with Glyndebourne music director Myer Fredman and with Carlo Montanaro. He holds doctoral degrees in both Theatre and Music.
In the theatre, Kevin was musical director of the original CATS at the New London Theatre and of the South Korean premiere production. More recently he conducted WICKED at London’s Apollo Victoria, and was originating musical director for its first UK and Eire national tour. He is also widely sought after for his American Songbook orchestrations, with arrangements performed by orchestras including the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.
As a composer, Kevin’s long collaboration with book writer and lyricist Victor Kazan has produced Rebecca, The Stranger from Seville and The Last Flight, alongside Castle Gillian: An Irish Tale. Castle Gillian is a world first: a 360 degree virtual reality musical that has won seven major international film festival awards, including at Cannes. With book and lyrics writer Peter Sham, Kevin has completed a stage adaptation of To Catch a Thief, and the two are now adapting The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with director Kenneth Hoyt, set to premiere in 2027.
His work has been recognised with the GOI-IES Scholarship, The American Prize Ernst Bacon Memorial Award, the Tait Memorial Trust Award, the Australian Music Foundation Sir Charles Mackerras Prize, the Opera Australia Willem van Otterloo Scholarship and the Bellhouse Conducting Prize.
Kevin is a voting member of The Recording Academy and the Dramatists Guild.
