…welded with dynamic precision by Young...a stunning performance...the audience stood witness to a musical triumph
- The Dominion

...riveting...the way he shaped this work and the stunning response he got from the players...it goes straight into my Top 20 short list...
- Christchurch Star

Kenneth Young is one of New Zealand’s leading conductors. He has established himself as a passionate and skilled interpreter of the Romantic and 20th Century repertoire, and twenty years of practical orchestral playing have given him a specialised rapport with his colleagues. Himself a composer, he has a particular interest in post-Romantic repertoire, and he has received recognition for his recordings of New Zealand orchestral music.

Young took up the position of Principal Tuba with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1976 and his experience as a conductor with the NZSO dates from 1985, culminating in his appointment as the orchestra’s Conductor in Residence early in 1993. In 2001 he resigned from the NZSO in order to pursue his conducting and composing career fulltime.

Young has worked with all the regional orchestras throughout New Zealand, and his engagements with the NZSO and the New Zealand Chamber Orchestra have included highly acclaimed CD recordings of the orchestral works of Edwin Carr, Gareth Farr, Douglas Lilburn, Lyle Cresswell and many others, and opera excerpts with the New Zealand tenor Keith Lewis. A CD of three symphonies by David Farquhar will be released in 2004. He has also regularly conducted seasons with the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Outside New Zealand, Young has worked with the Queensland Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra,
Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the City of Osaka Sinfonia, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to his work as a performer and a conductor, Young has become one of New Zealand’s leading composers. Various commissions from Chamber Music New Zealand, the NZSO, the International Festival of the Arts and Radio New Zealand, have been performed nationwide and also in the United States, Europe and Australia. He has also been a member of the music faculty at Victoria University, Wellington, since 1988.

His most recent performances include family and pops concerts with James Morrison and the Auckland Philharmonia and Christmas concerts with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. In 2004 he returns to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.