studied piano and conducting at the conservatories in Cologne and Düsseldorf. As a pianist he won several international competitions for chamber music and performed regularly as a concert soloist until he exclusively concentrated on conducting. After attending masterclasses with Leonard Bernstein, Sergiu Celibidache, John Eliot Gardiner, and various jobs as a répétiteur and principal conductor at Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels and theatres in Basel and Lübeck, Rüdiger Bohn worked with important symphony orchestras in Germany and abroad. His repertoire includes works of the early classical period until the modern era.
In the years 1997–2007 Rüdiger Bohn was the artistic director of the Contemporary Opera Berlin. With this activity, he enlarged his interest in contemporary music. Prestigious ensembles like Klangforum Wien, the Collegium Novum Zürich, and the Österreichisches Ensemble für Neue Musik invited him as a guest conductor. Since 2009 he works closely with the Ensemble musikFabrik in Cologne. He conducted at many national and international festivals; representative examples are the Salzburg Festival, Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, Munich Biennale, and Warsaw Autumn. He is always passionate about the collaboration with composers, including Beat Furrer, Toshio Hosokawa, Isabel Mundry, Wolfgang Rihm, José Sánchez-Verdú, and Hans Zender. He has regularly conducted ensembles and orchestras in Korea (Tongyeong International Music Festival, Seoul Philharmonic, Seong Nam Philharmonic) and Japan (Next Mushroom Promotion Ensemble, Takefu International Festival).
Recently Rüdiger Bohn conducted the world premiere of Sarah Nemtsov’s L’absence at the Munich Biennale. In 2013 he conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in London.
Since 2003 Rüdiger Bohn is artistic director of the European Workshop for Contemporary Music. He is professor of conducting at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf.