Alumni

Ivor Bolton

Conductor, Organ Scholar (1976-79)
Website

“Clare College Choir is now firmly established as one of the finest chamber choirs in Europe and indeed the world.”

“Clare College Choir is now firmly established as one of the finest chamber choirs in Europe and indeed the world.

It helped to bring forward and develop some of the finest musicians in Britain and has become a magnet for highly gifted singers. I myself remember vividly thrilling musical experiences with this ensemble under John Ruttter and Tim Brown and feel very proud to see its rapid development which now continues under its exciting new Director of Music Graham Ross.

I have taken the Choir to the Salzburg Festival and the Munich Opera Festival several times as well as the BBC Proms and look forward to seeing and hearing them many times in the future at such venues.”

Ivor Bolton became Chief Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg in 2004. He was Music Director of English Touring Opera in 1991/2, Music Director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera from 1992-97, Chief Conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra from 1994-96, and was the founding music director of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music and the St James’s Baroque Players in London. Ivor Bolton made his Covent Garden debut in 1995, and has enjoyed a long association with Glyndebourne. Other UK operatic engagements have taken him to English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, and Opera North.

He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2000 with Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride and has returned each year since then including three Mozart operas in the 2006 Mozart year, Haydn’s Armida in 2007 and Theodora at the 2009 Festival. Ivor Bolton has worked with many of the UK’s principal symphony orchestras, as well as with leading orchestras throughout the world, where concert engagements in recent seasons have included Vienna, Salzburg Festival, New York, Boston, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, Paris, Florence, Milan, Rotterdam, WDR Cologne, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Academia Nazionale di Santa Cecelia in Rome, Handel’s Athalia with Concerto Köln in New York, Paris and London and the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra, with whom he conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony over New Year 2005/6. He made his debut at the BBC Proms in 1993, conducted Bach St John Passion at the Proms in 2000, and the Mozarteum Orchester in 2006.