John Gibbons, St Albans Chamber Choir’s musical director, has conducted numerous acclaimed productions for Opera Holland Park with verismo operas as a speciality. John is renowned for his communication with audiences and was awarded a special prize by the British Music Society in 2000 for his ‘communication with the audience’. John has always encompassed a broad range of disciplines within the musical world: he enjoys conducting opera, orchestral concerts, choral concerts, and chamber choirs, as well as performing as a pianist and organist. John regularly guest conducts the RPO as well as most of the major British orchestras including the CBSO, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia, with whom he recorded music by Skalkottas and Joseph James. John is Principal Conductor of Worthing Symphony Orchestra, the professional orchestra of West Sussex.
In 2005 he devised and directed the nationwide tour of the new Requiem by Karl Jenkins, a tour supported by EMI and promoted heavily on Classic FM. He has long been a great champion of the music of Sir William Walton and in September 2006, at the invitation of Lady Walton, conducted the first concert of Walton’s orchestral music at the composer’s home, La Mortella, on the island of Ischia.
John’s interests include renovating old houses, garden design, promoting music to all and sundry through talks such as ‘Is Live music Dead?’, and Wolverhampton Wanderers, a passion he shares with the late Sir Edward Elgar. John is also a composer and has recently written a film score for the BFI, as well as choral works for Clifton Cathedral in Bristol. Work abroad includes the Romanian première of Walton’s First Symphony with the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra as well as concerts with the Cape Town Philharmonic, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and opera performances in Singapore, Colorado and the Spier Festival, South Africa. In January 2008 he conducted the Macedonian Philharmonic in music by Dvořák and Rakhmaninov.
John was recently appointed Walton Fellow at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, with the specific task of preparing a new orchestral reduction of Sir William Walton’s opera Troilus and Cressida. This was premièred at St Louis, Missouri, in June 2008, by Opera Theatre of St Louis, Missouri, to a standing ovation and great critical acclaim including the critic of the Dallas Morning News hailing it as ‘the operatic revelation of the year’. John is now engaged on a string of similar projects.
Recent reviews
SEEN AND HEARD UK CONCERT REVIEW – Frank Bridge, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov: Alexander Soares (piano), Ealing Symphony Orchestra, John Gibbons,St Barnabas’s Church, Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, London, 20.2.2010 (BBr) http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2010/Jan-Jun10/ealing2020.htm
“Gibbons is a most undemonstrative conductor on the podium – I have the feeling that he sees himself as a conduit, through which the music must pass so as to allow the music he is directing to be heard as clearly as possible, for he never imposes himself between the music and the audience – but the results he achieves are quite stunning.”
” . . . with Gibbons’s knowledge of music, and his insights, it was thoroughly enjoyable and easily enjoyed. Bravo to all concerned.”
” . . . for here again, is an example of Gibbons’s understanding of music. “Too many people see Le Sacre as an orchestral showpiece, but it’s not, it’s a piece for dance”, he told me, and his approach was just that.”