Armand Singh Birk
Praised for his passionate, sincere, and authoritative conducting, Armand Singh Birk is a Canadian Orchestral and Operatic conductor. Having come to music late in his life, Armand believes firsthand that a single performance has the power to fundamentally change a person’s life for the better.
Armand’s current and past work is varied including engagements with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig Gewandhaus Mendelssohn-Orchester Akademie, the Tanglewood Music Centre Orchestra, l’Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Little Opera Company, the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and various University-level and youth ensembles. In 2019, Armand founded a pre-professional chamber orchestra in Edmonton, the River City Chamber Orchestra, whose goal is to offer unique opportunities to budding young musicians. With an exciting and innovative approach to programming, Armand has developed inter-disciplinary performances that showcase live painting, dance, and poetry that have helped connect audiences with a wide variety of repertoire from Vivaldi to Schoenberg. Formerly the Artistic Director of the Centre d’arts visuels de l’Alberta, Armand’s passion for the arts knows no bounds and is dedicated to combining various art forms in innovative and life-changing ways.
One of two 2023 conducting fellows at the Tanglewood Music Center, Armand recently completed his graduate studies at the University of British Columbia. His primary teachers and mentors have been Petar Dundjerski, and Jonathan Girard. He has also had the privilege of studying with Andris Nelsons, Stefan Asbury, Dima Slobodeniouk, Xian Zhang, Dame Jane Glover, James Ross, James Lowe, Thomas Rösner Yoav Talmi, Daniel Raiskin, and Leonard Ratzlaff to varying degrees. Armand has had the privilege of conducting in many of North America’s great concert halls such as the Koussivetsky Music Shed, the Seiji Ozawa Hall, the Winspear Centre for the Arts, the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, the Centennial Concert Hall, and the Domaine Forget concert hall. Armand is currently a conducting fellow with l’Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal, where is mentored by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Armand earned a Bachelor of Music from the University of Alberta, where he studied voice with Elizabeth Turnbull and Shannon Hiebert. Originally from Victoria, Armand’s initial experience as a musician was as a bassist for jazz and folk bands. Originally unable to read music and following a Bachelor of Science program, it was not until he began his vocal studies with Laurier Fagnan at Campus Saint-Jean in 2014 that he found his love and passion for classical music and conducting.
