Oliver Zeffman

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Oliver George Zeffman, born October 1992, is a British conductor. He started and curates the annual Classic Pride festival at the Barbican Centre in London, launched in 2023. It was Europe’s first festival of its kind, highlighting music by LGBT composers and performed by LGBT musicians.

Zeffman was born in London; his brother is journalist Henry Zeffman. He began playing violin at age four. He studied History and Russian at Durham University and spent a year at the St Petersburg Conservatory. He founded the Melos Sinfonia orchestra while still at school and later performed abroad. With Melos Sinfonia, he led the Russian premieres of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin in 2017 and Lessons in Love and Violence in 2019.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, he created Eight Songs from Isolation, inviting composers such as Thomas Adès and Nico Muhly to contribute songs performed by singers including Iestyn Davies and Sarah Connolly. It was released on Apple Music and Marquee TV.

In 2021 he released Live at the V&A, with violinist Viktoria Mullova and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, filmed in the Raphael Court at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2022 he continued his Apple Music collaborations with Music x Museums, a series of concerts at the Science Museum, Cutty Sark and British Library, filmed for release in 2023 on Apple Music’s Platoon label.

In 2023 he conducted the first Classical Pride concert by a major orchestra outside the US, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, at the Barbican, with soloists Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy, Nicky Spence, Davóne Tines and Ella Taylor.

In 2024 he curated a second Classical Pride festival, including a classical drag show judged by Monet X Change and Thorgy Thor, alongside opera singer Nicky Spence. At the Barbican he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in works by Copland, Cassandra Miller, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky, Szymanowski and Jake Heggie.

In 2025 he curated a third Classical Pride festival, including the first international performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Barbican hosted Voices of Joy and Sorrow, where Zeffman conducted the London Symphony Orchestra playing works by Jake Heggie, George Benjamin, Tchaikovsky and others, with soloists Jamie Barton and Cameron Shahbazi.