Pavel Kotla is presently the musical director of the Redhill Sinfonia (est. 1891) and the Harpenden Choral Society (in association with the King's Chamber Orchestra). He is also the principal guest conductor of City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra and the conductor of Hounslow Youth Orchestra.

He studied conducting with Boguslaw Madey and Ryszard Dudek at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw, in his native Poland. He received his graduate degree in performance practice and musicology with Andrew Parrott ( Taverner Choir & Players ) and Edward Higginbottom ( New College Choir ) at Oxford University, and took part in international music masterclasses in Vienna, Innsbruck (Austria), Siena and Bressanone (Italy).

In 1995 he organized and conducted in Warsaw the first concert of full Polish orchestra of period instruments “Arte dei Suonatori” (recent winners of ‘Diapason d'Or' and Gramophone's ‘Record of the Month' awards). In 1997/98 he was associated with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London as a Performance Fellow in conducting and the assistant conductor to their prestigious Opera Department. He was the musical director of the Bromsgrove String Orchestra (1999-2001) and Stevenage Symphony Orchestra (2001-2004).

As a regular assistant conductor to Sir Simon Rattle during last five years he worked on such projects as Towards Millennium and Hear Now Festivals (Birmingham and South Bank Centre), CD recordings of Szymanowski's "King Roger" and “Harnasie” (EMI) and the Millennium Concert (Ely Cathedral) where he took part as the second conductor in the BBC live broadcast of the premier of Mark Anthony Turnage's "About Time".

He has conducted professional ensembles in the UK and internationally, such as the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra , Birmingham Contemporary Music Group , London Mozart Players and Drottningholm Barockensemble in Sweden. In Britain he has also appeared with Volante Strings , Leicester Symphony Orchestra , City of Rochester Symphony Orchestra , City of Peterborough Symphony Orchestra and Essex Youth Orchestra . Within last three seasons he made his first appearances with no less than twelve professional orchestras in Poland (Gdansk, Kalisz, Kielce, Koszalin, Lublin, Lodz, Lomza, Olsztyn, Poznan, Szczecin, Walbrzych and Wroclaw).

In April 2005 he received an Honorary Medal from the Association of Polish Orchestras and Choirs in recognition of his work in Poland.