Mark Forkgen is Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of Kokoro (the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s contemporary music group) and Music Director of Canticum and London Concert Choir.

He has worked with a number of leading orchestras, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, English Chamber Orchestra, English Northern Philharmonia and the Composers’ Ensemble, appearing at all the major venues including the Royal Festival Hall, the Barbican and the Royal Albert Hall.

A specialist if the field of choral and contemporary music, he has given the first performances of over one hundred works. These include stage works with the Trestle Theatre Company and Britten Sinfonia, and contemporary opera with the Unicorn Theatre Company and an ensemble from the Philharmonia, at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

Mark has been Conductor and Artistic Advisor for highly acclaimed festivals including: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ 70th Birthday; Stravinsky, the Composers of the South-West, A Festival of Britten and most recently Music of the Americas. His recordings with Canticum and Kokoro have been highly recommended by BBC Radio 3 as well as both musical and national press. In Europe he has conducted in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and the Czech Republic. He has also given performances of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Denmark, as well as Handel’s Messiah and Israel in Egypt in Siena and the Viterbo Early Music Festival in Italy.

Highlights last season included: Haydn’s Creation in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and at the Guildhall in London, Britten’s St Nicolas, Handel’s Messiah with the Manchester Camerata, the first performance of Hugh Wood’s Tenebrae in Bournemouth, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Barbican with the English Chamber Orchestra, Respighi’s Pines of Rome and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture at the Royal Albert Hall, as well as the opening concerts in the Chelsea Festival, recreating Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother. Concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra included Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Walton’s Henry V Suite, and Elgar’s Enigma Variotions.

Mark is also a champion of Youth Music. He was the Conductor of the Scottish Schools’ Orchestra for ten years and Music Director of Ealing Youth Orchestra for eight years. He is currently Conductor of Dorset Youth Orchestra and Director of Music at Tonbridge School.