Since the 2014/15 season, Rasmus Baumann has been Genaeral Music Director of the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen (NPW), the largest orchestra in North Rhine-Westphalia with 124 musicians and the opera orchestra of the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen. “For the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Westphalia, Rasmus Baumann proves to be the ideal cast and is an orchestra director at the cutting edge of his field, combining meticulous attention to detail with controlled passion,” writes the press. Since his time as General Music Director of the NPW, he has initiated numerous innovative projects with his orchestra: the new conception of the symphony concert cycle with a programmatic red thread, the expansion of crossover concerts to include the entire carrier area of the ensemble, the introduction of school or family concerts or the establishment of numerous new concert series such as the “Klassik_Dialoge” or “NPW Barock”.

In addition, Rasmus Baumann has been a regular guest of various renowned orchestras in recent years, such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Stuttgart and Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestras, the Hamburg and Nuremberg Symphony Orchestras, the Badische Staatskapelle Karlsruhe, Staatskapelle Weimar, the NDR Radio Philharmonic, the BR and WDR Radio Orchestras and the orchestras in Kiel, Oldenburg, Bochum or Wiesbaden, to name but a few. He conducts at the opera houses in Frankfurt, Cologne, Karlsruhe, the Komische Oper Berlin and the Hamburg State Opera, numerous immediate re-invitations testify to his competent work. Upcoming highlights include conducting with the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Staatstheater Mainz.

After his studies in Essen (piano), Frankfurt (conducting) and Bochum (church music), his first engagement led him to the Aalto-Theater Essen, where he worked under Stefan Soltesz, first as a solo répétiteur, later as 2nd Kapellmeister. From 2003 to 2008 he was engaged as Deputy General Music Director and 1st Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater Kassel.

As a scholarship holder of the Dirigentenforum, the support program of the German Music Council for highly talented conductors, he won a special prize at the German Conductors’ Prize in Berlin in 2009.

Over the years, Rasmus Baumann has acquired a comprehensive music theater repertoire that includes more than 70 conducted works, ranging from baroque opera to the great Italian and German operas of the 19th and 20th centuries and the modern era.  Parallel to his career as a classical Kapellmeister he was active in a wide variety of musical fields: he works as a jazz pianist, organist and choir director, wrote piano scores for the Bärenreiter publishing house, composed the Motto-Lied for the !Sing Day of Song 2014 and developed a penchant for historically informed performance practice.

In the winter semester 2018/19 Rasmus Baumann was appointed as professor at the University of Music Stuttgart.