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Photo by Debbie Davies (Debs Photography) |
Richard Laing has established a reputation as one of the most exciting and versatile conductors in Britain today, and has conducted extensively in France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Awarded the sinfonia ViVA Conducting Scholarship in 2001 he has a continuing relationship with ViVA, conducting them in concerts across the UK. Richard is Music Director of The Midland Sinfonia, Nottingham Harmonic Society, Operamus, Lancashire Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Leicester Bach Choir; Artistic Director of the Leamington Chamber Orchestra; Associate Conductor of the virtuoso young ensemble Sinfonia Cymru, Associate Conductor of the |
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Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra, Associate Conductor of Stoneleigh Youth Orchestra in London, and a frequent guest conductor
with Queen’s Park Sinfonia, Hallam Sinfonia, Sinfonia of Birmingham and Chandos Symphony Orchestra.
Richard is a conductor and coach on the Orchestral Programme and in the Department of Vocal and Operatic Studies
at Birmingham Conservatoire where he works with Lionel Friend and Stephen Barlow; he is also Visiting Lecturer in
Conducting at the University of Wolverhampton.
Richard’s operatic work has included Albert Herring, Hansel and Gretel and Noye’s Fludde (Operamus), La Traviata and La Bohème (Dartington Festival Opera), The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Malcolm Williamson’s English Eccentrics (Birmingham Conservatoire), Adrian Cruft’s Dr Syn (Kent Opera) and Handel’s Orlando (Pigotts). He frequently performs with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists and singers, including principal players from the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Dresden Staatskapelle, Amsterdam Baroque, Munich Philharmonic, CBSO, RLPO and Scottish Chamber Orchestras, as well as Brigitte Engerer, Emily Pailthorpe, Anthony Halstead, Leonard Schreiber, Oliver Coates, Robert Hayward, Neil Jenkins, Peter Wedd, John Turner, Alan Hacker, Joanne Lunn, Adrian Bradbury and David LePage. He has premiered dozens of new works including Paul Patterson’s recent Phoenix Concerto, and is in demand as an adjudicator and coach at festivals and summer schools and as a leader of orchestral and choral workshops around the UK. Richard has given several performances with Radio 1 DJ Bobby Friction, who has hailed him as “the Iggy Pop of classical music.” Richard gained his Master's Degree from Birmingham Conservatoire after nine months of study, along with a postgraduate diploma in conducting and the Conservatoire's Postgraduate Prize for the most outstanding contribution to the musical life of the college. Subsequently he was supported by the Foyle Foundation to work intensively on operatic conducting at Dartington with Diego Masson. Richard studied violin at the University of Illinois and the RNCM, and plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Orchestra of the Swan, Southern Sinfonia, the Welsh Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra da Camera, and as a guest leader for Queen’s Park Sinfonia, Sinfonia of Birmingham, Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra and Chandos Symphony Orchestra. In his limited spare time Richard pursues a wide range of academic interests: his undergraduate work in Manchester on John F. Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam won him the Kaiser Award for American History, and he has presented papers on subjects as diverse as Hollywood film, reality TV and the Ring cycle at the International Conferences on Film and Literature at Florida State University and the International Wagner Symposium at the University of Adelaide. Among his proudest achievements are being appointed Vice President of the University of Illinois Triathlon Club and having articles published in the iconic games magazine White Dwarf. Richard is married to the singer and psychologist Karen Wise, a post-doctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Music at at the University of Cambridge. |
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