Teodor Currentzis is the founder and artistic director of the Utopia Orchestra and Choir, as well as artistic director of the musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir. Between 2018 and 2024 he was chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra.
Teodor was born in Greece, where he began studying music. In 1994, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory to study with the legendary teacher Ilya Musin.
Together with his ensembles, Teodor Currentzis tours regularly across Europe and the world, performing in numerous prestigious venues including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Munich Philharmonic, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Auditorio Nacional, the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus and La Scala. As a stage director and music director, Teodor Currentzis has worked with leading opera houses, including the Paris Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, the Zurich Opera, the Teatro Real and the Bolshoi Theatre. He has also collaborated with key figures of modern Western theatre: Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci, Peter Sellars, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Theodoros Terzopoulos and others. Teodor Currentzis is an artist in residence at the Salzburg Festival, as well as at the RUHRtriennale and the Lucerne and Aix-en-Provence festivals.
Works by Mozart, Mahler, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rameau and Stravinsky, released by Teodor Currentzis on the Sony Classical label, have received numerous international music awards: the ECHO Klassik, the Edison Klassiek, the Japan Record Academy Award and the Opera Award from BBC Music Magazine. Teodor Currentzis has received the prestigious KAIROS Prize from the Toepfer Foundation. He has also been honoured with the Greek Order of the Phoenix and the Musikfest Bremen international award.
In 2024, Teodor Currentzis founded his own record label, Theta, in collaboration with Outhere Music. The label’s name comes from the Greek letter Θ (Theta), a nod to Currentzis’s Greek roots. Theta focuses on recording the broad repertoire performed by his various ensembles, starting with Utopia. The first releases will be dedicated to Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, both scheduled for 2026. These recordings were made during extensive sessions at the orchestra’s creative residency at Funkhaus Berlin, a studio complex renowned for its exceptional acoustics.
