Mikel Toms was born in London in 1968. He studied Music at Oxford University and conducting with Christopher Adey and subsequently with Peter Eötvös as a member of the International Eötvös Institute Foundation. In 1989, he was President of the first Oxford Contemporary Music Festival, conducting a complete performance of Messiaen's Des Canyons Aux Étoiles at the age of 20.
Mikel has been Artistic Director of the contemporary music chamber orchestra Reservoir since 1993 and was appointed Director of Recordings of the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this year.
Mikel has performed, recorded and broadcast with prominent orchestras and ensembles including the London Chamber Orchestra, the Oslo Sinfonietta, the Ensemble Modern, the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Prague Sinfonia, the Kazakhstan State Symphony Orchestra, the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Uralsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Czech Film Orchestra, Elision (Australia's national contemporary music ensemble), Ensemble Corrente, the Oxford Contemporary Music Festival Ensemble, Topologies, the Grup Instrumental de Valencia and Apartment House. He has conducted several broadcasts for BBC Radio 3's Hear and Now programme, has broadcast on Italian, German, Spanish and Irish radio, and has appeared at festivals in London, Bath, Huddersfield, Belfast, Darmstadt, Innsbruck, Sligo, Almaty, Valencia, Dortmund and Berlin.
With Reservoir, Mikel has performed, recorded and broadcast a wide range of contemporary repertoire. The orchestra has released two CDs of contemporary Irish music on the Black Box label and Mikel has also recorded discs of music by Richard Emsley and Michael Finnissy on the Metier label with the ensemble Topologies and of concertos by Schnittke, Langer and Mozetich on Quartz.
Mikel was a recipient of the 1994-95 Arts Council of England Artists' Research and Development Award and in 1996 he was a finalist for the position of Young Conductor in Association with the Northern Sinfonia. Also in 1996, Mikel's work with Reservoir earned them the highest possible Performing Rights Society Enterprise Award.
Mikel attended the Darmstadt Internationales Ferienkurse from 1996 to 2000, twice being awarded a Patenring Scholarship and also winning the Stipendium Prize for performance. In 1996, he was selected to conduct the Ensemble Modern in a performance of Stockhausen's Mixtur, in collaboration with the composer.
From 1997 to 2000, Mikel was Administrative Director of British Youth Opera, the UK's opera training company. Mikel is currently Creative Director of the CD label Quartz and of BPO Live, the official label of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2005, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts.
© May 2007. This biography must not be edited without the permission of Charles Padley Artists.
