Michael Lloyd
conductor
Michael Lloyd first conducted the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra in 1985 and became Music Director and Principal Conductor in 1994.
Since his conducting debut with Scottish Ballet, Michael Lloyd’s conducting career has encompassed opera, ballet, symphony concerts and West End musical (he was Music Director from 2006-8 for The Sound of Music in the London Palladium). He spent eight years in opera houses in Germany, where he was also very active in chamber music, as a continuo player and chorus master. This was followed by eighteen years on the staff of English National Opera, for whom he conducted many performances of a wide repertoire, including Britten’s Turn of the Screw on ENO’s Russian tour in 1990. He has conducted in Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Norway, New Zealand and Australia. Here in the UK he has also appeared with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, Opera Holland Park, Chelsea Opera Group, English Touring Opera, British Youth Opera and English National Ballet.
Michael teaches regularly in the opera schools of the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and in 2006 was appointed Advisor to the OperaGenesis programme at the Royal Opera House.
Since September 2009 Michael has been Principal Guest Conductor in the opera house in Magdeburg, Germany. There he has conducted new productions of La Traviata and Orpheus in the Underworld for the opera and of Nutcracker, Graduation Ball and Don Quixote for the ballet, as well as revivals of Manon and Giselle He has also conducted symphony concerts and in 2011 was invited to conduct Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which is performed annually on January 16th to mark the almost total destruction of the city on that day in 1945. He is the first ever British or American conductor to have been invited to do so.
Last year he returned to New Zealand, where he has conducted opera, ballet and symphony concerts since 1994, to work with Ethan Stiefel and Johan Kobborg on a new production of Giselle for Royal New Zealand Ballet. Plans for 2014 include Mahler’s Third Symphony, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung and Dvořák’s First and “forgotten“ Cello Concerto.
Michael is also music director of the Chandos Symphony Orchestra, Malvern.
