Musical Director - James Ross
CONDUCTOR JAMES ROSS won scholarships to Harrow School and to Christ
Church at Oxford University. There he studied history and music, writing a
doctorate on French opera under Professor Roger Parker awarded the Sir Donald
Tovey Prize. He was a 1998 BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Conducting Competition
finalist; since then he has conducted in nineteen countries throughout Europe,
North America, Africa and Asia. He is Music Director of Sidcup Symphony
Orchestra in London, Haslemere Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Welwyn Garden
City Orchestra and Chorus, Bridgnorth Sinfonia, Artistic Director of Kent Sinfonia,
and Artistic Advisor to The Commonwealth Resounds. In October 2022 he will also
become Music Director of King's College London Symphony Orchestra. Previous
positions include with St Albans Symphony Orchestra, of which he is Vice-President,
and Oxford University Sinfonietta. He has performed in UK venues including The
Royal Festival Hall, Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II, and St. John's
Smith Square, London, Symphony Hall, Birmingham and the Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford, including Beethoven's 9th Symphony for its 350th anniverary.
He has conducted over 1,000 works, ranging from the Baroque, most core symphonic and choral repertoire, to contemporary music by Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen and many more. Major 20th-Century works include Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring; Schoenberg, Pierrot Lunaire; Janáček, Sinfonietta and Bartók, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. He has also conducted much specialist French music and has a strong interest in contemporary music, including recording studio and film work, and live screenings with Kent Sinfonia. Numerous first performances include New Music Days with Roxanna Panufnik, Paul Patterson and City of London Sinfonia members supported by the Arts Council, and at London's Saatchi Gallery with Philharmonia Orchestra members. In 2013 he conducted the first orchestral concert at Colombo's Nelum Pokuna Theatre in Sri Lanka. As Artistic Advisor to The Commonwealth Resounds, in 2015 he conducted the Commonwealth Festival Orchestra in Malta at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, in 2017 toured with Chetham's School of Music to Uganda, in 2018 he conducted The Purcell School and Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra members on Istanbul's Princes Islands, and in 2019 and 2020 returned to perform there for Istanbul Biennial, broadcast on TRT Radyo-3 and IBB TV. He gave the first performance of Nicola Moro's opera Love Hurts at the Piccolo Teatro, Milan and has been invited to conduct by the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York.
James Ross started his opera career in 1996 assisting on Bernard Haitink’s Royal Opera Don Carlos recording and has conducted standard repertoire from Mozart to Britten and contemporary operas, working with singers such as Sir Thomas Allen, Janice Watson Dmitri Hvorostrovsky and Olga Borodina; he has also worked on the music staff for Longborough Festival Opera's production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. He has studied with conductors from diverse musical traditions including Tsung Yeh (USA and China), Zdenĕk Bílek (Czech Republic and Slovakia), Victor Feldbrill (Canada), Ernst Schelle (Switzerland, France, and Bosnia with AIDIMOS), Michael Charry (USA) and Alan Hazeldine (UK); he has also received advice from Bernard Haitink, Paul Daniel, Peter Donohoe, Sir David Willcocks and Sir Charles Mackerras. He is a frequent guest speaker, including at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Purcell School of Music; he has taught at Oxford University and contributed to Music and Letters, Opera, English Historical Review, Musical Times and books including Vincent d'Indy et son temps, French Music Since Berlioz and French Music, Nationalism and Culture.
James Ross has helped raise over £1,000,000 through concerts for charities including Whizz-Kidz, Addaction, Rethink, The Fund for Epilepsy, NSPCC, Response International, UNICEF, Sunera Foundation of Sri Lanka and Oxfam. In 2012, he presented a concert in aid of the Sunera Foundation and the UK-Sri Lanka Trauma Group with Danielle de Niese and Rohan de Silva at St John's Smith Square, London, and has conducted with English National Ballet in aid of Save The Children.
He is a Fellow of the Incorporated Society of Musicians (UK), the Conductors Guild (USA) and League of American Orchestras, and holds a UK enhanced DBS certificate. He is also a director of music consultancy, production company and record label Ulysses Arts , whose clients include record companies, orchestras, venues and digital music services and other specialist music businesses, including Apple/ITunes, The Barbican Centre in London; Deutsche Grammophon; The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, L'Orchestre de Paris; L'Orchestre national de Lille, the French government's Bureau Export; The Julliard School of Music and 21C Media Group in New York; soloists including Margaret Marshall, Jeremy Denk, Sarah Willis, Meyer Sound Laboratories in Berkeley California and The Afghanistan National Institute of Music.
James Ross is a director and trustee of Kent Sinfonia providing artistic advice in addition to conducting engagements, and beyond music, serves as a non-executive director of The Commonwealth Human Ecology Council.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, James Ross has organised a live-streamed televised concert in Istanbul, and through directing Ulysses Arts, he has worked on digital music innovation and enabled the release of numerous recordings by his colleagues in the music profession. In September 2022 he conducted the Ankara City Philharmonic's inaugural concert at the new Presidential Symphony Orchestral Hall.