Eric Staiger is a finalist and winner of the IX Jorma Panula Competition 2024. 

Since the 25/26 season, he has been coord. 1st Kapellmeister at the Oldenburg State Theatre, where he previously worked as 2nd Kapellmeister. There he currently conducts performances of ‘Barbière di Siviglia’, ‘La Traviata’, ‘Werther’, “Cabaret”, ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’, ‘Les Contes d'Hoffmann’, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ (ballet), New Year's concerts and the 6th and 7th Symphony Concert.  

Last season, he conducted ‘Hänsel und Gretel’, ‘The Turn of the Screw’, ‘Der Freischütz’, various children's and family concerts and the theatre ball.

 

At the Deutsche Oper Berlin, he recently assisted Sir Donald Runnicles and Nicholas Carter in ‘Tristan und Isolde’ and ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’. He has also made guest appearances with the Staatskapelle Weimar (cross-over concert), the Kiel Theatre (‘Die Fledermaus’), the Musical Comedy of the Leipzig Opera (‘Die Fledermaus’), Bühnen Halle (‘La Bohème’) and as musical director of ‘Die Lustige Witwe’ at the Mecklenburg State Theatre as part of the Schwerin Castle Festival 2025.

He was honoured as a prize winner and youngest finalist at the Kodály Conducting Competition 2023 and was chief conductor of the KHG Orchestra Freiburg from 2022-2024, with whom he performed Bruckner's 8th Symphony and Mahler's 3rd Symphony at the Konzerthaus Freiburg. Prior to this, he conducted the Orchestre Universitaire de Strasbourg for one semester.

He studied orchestral conducting in the class of Prof Nicolás Pasquet and Prof Ekhart Wycik at the Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar, where he completed his Master of Music with distinction. He also studied at the Zurich University of the Arts with Prof Johannes Schlaefli and Prof Christoph-Mathias Mueller and at the Norges musikkhøgskole in Oslo with Prof Ole Kristian Ruud. In masterclasses he has been taught by personalities such as Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jorma Panula, James Gaffigan, Dalia Stasevska and Arthur Fagen.

Eric Staiger has performed as a conductor with orchestras such as the Thessaloniki State Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Mecklenburgische Staatskapelle Schwerin, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the Landesjugend-Sinfonieorchester Hessen, the Jenaer Philharmonie, the Severočeská Filharmonie Teplice, the Karlovarský symfonický orchestr, the Filharmonie Hradec Králové and the Janáčkova filharmonie Ostrava and was a regular guest conductor of the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig, where he conducted numerous student and youth concerts. He has worked as an opera assistant at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, the Bühnen Bern and the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Overall, Eric Staiger has been influenced by various musical genres. Growing up in Lübeck in northern Germany, he began learning the violin at an early age and played in youth orchestras such as the Landesjugendorchester Schleswig-Holstein, which sparked his extensive fascination for the colorful sound of a symphony orchestra. While still at school, he began studying jazz piano at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. At the age of 17, he gave his first concert at the Jazzbaltica festival and won the IB.SH JazzAward with his trio. After the trio was awarded a national prize at Jugend Jazzt, he founded a big band in the same year, which he led and for which he also composed and arranged. The big band won the "Skoda Jazz Prize 2014" in the national Jugend Jazzt competition.
Various projects and concert tours have taken him to numerous festivals (including the Elbjazzfestival, Jazzfestival Kopenhagen, Shanghai JZ Festival, Jazzfest Bonn, Jazzfestival Schloss Elmau). As the pianist of the Nils Landgren Quartet (feat. Wolfgang Haffner), he performed at the Beijing Music Festival as part of a tour of China. He has also played with ensembles such as the NDR and SWR Bigband. In 2015, he was the pianist for a Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival project and performed with the SHMF Orchestra and Christian Lindberg in Denmark and Hamburg. After his jazz studies, he moved to the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar in 2017 to begin his bachelor's degree in orchestral conducting with Prof. Ekhart Wycik and Prof. Nicolás Pasquet. He continued his studies in jazz piano there with Prof. Achim Kaufmann. In 2022, he was engaged by the NDR Vokalensemble (former NDR Choir) to rehearse a cross-genre concert program.
Eric Staiger is a scholarship holder of the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation and the Richard Wagner Association.