About

Ed is a conductor, a jazz musician, a pianist, a singer, a researcher, a writer and a teacher. Also a determined advocate of new music and of new ways of making music, his influences are many and varied and he is committed to bringing that ideological variety into everything he does as a conductor.

Conductor

Ed Liebrecht is a conductor based in London and Amsterdam. He studied in Amsterdam with Jac van Steen, Ed Spanjaard and the late Kenneth Montgomery. He is the founder of two orchestras, a jazz trumpeter, a pianist, teacher, writer, arranger and editor. Upcoming projects include concerts with Noord Nederlands Orkest, Oxford University Orchestra and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, assisting John Wilson with the Nederlands Philharmonic and conducting Asko | Schönberg in a collaboration with AI artist Jameszoo.

Before moving to the Netherlands in 2021, Ed graduated with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied conducting with Sian Edwards and was awarded the Fred Southall Prize for his final exam. From 2016 to 2019 he studied Music at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with First with Distinction, with prizes awarded for his analysis of Shostakovich and his completion of Mahler’s 10th Symphony. Since 2019 he has taught analysis and musicology at the University of Cambridge.

Ed has worked extensively as an assistant conductor with orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Residentie Orkest, Philharmonie ZuidNederland, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, and Sinfonia of London, founded and conducted by John Wilson, with whom he works regularly around the world. In various contexts, Ed has conducted Asko | Schönberg, the London Symphony Orchestra, PHION, Philharmonie ZuidNederland, Nederlands Philharmonic Orkest, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Ensemble Kontraste, the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Nationaal Jeugd Orkest and many other groups and orchestras. 

Born in London, Ed is a trumpet player and pianist by training, is a devotee of jazz, pop and light music traditions and their influences on the orchestral repertoire, and is particularly interested in collaborative interdisciplinary practice, new music of all kinds and the avant-garde of the 20th Century.

Trumpet
Ed began his musical life in brass bands and orchestras, but quickly shifted to jazz. In 2016 he joined Marie and the Boys, whose albums are on Spotify, Apple Music and CD. He continues to record with them as often as possible.

Research and Arrangements

Ed teaches Analysis and Musicology at the University of Cambridge. His analytical interests are in 20th and 21st Century European and American music. His research on analysing improvised jazz will shortly be published, and other work includes papers on Shostakovich’s 15th Symphony, Mahler’s 10th and a historical-philosophical investigation into Das Lied von der Erde. He is currently working on papers on disciplinarity, musical phenomenology, English music and the role of conductors in societal and sociological discourse.


As an arranger Ed makes reductions of large scale works for chamber orchestra. Among these are the Ruckert-Lieder and Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder for chamber orchestra, a re-orchestration of Heinrich Biber's Battalia a 10 for the same forces as Copland's Appalachian Spring, and his own completion of Mahler's 10th Symphony for a Beethoven-sized orchestra. 


Ed teaches academic music, piano, trumpet, music theory and conducting. For more about tuition, see here.