Roy Goodman

About

Official Site: http://www.roygoodman.com/

ROY GOODMAN – a more detailed biography/CV (from May 2006)

Roy Goodman is Principal Guest Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra and for the past few years has been Principal Conductor of Holland Symfonia and the Bachkoor Holland. He is well known for his work as director and founder of the Brandenburg Consort (1975-2001), as co-founder (with Peter Holman) of the Parley of Instruments (1979-1986), co-founder (with Denys Darlow) of the London Handel Orchestra (in 1981), Principal Conductor of the Hanover Band (1986-1994), Music Director of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (1989-2004) and as Music Director of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in Winnipeg (1999-2005).
In 2006 he made his debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam [see www.roygoodman.com]

In 1959 (at the age of eight) Goodman made his first recording for Decca as a boy treble, with the choir of Kings College Cambridge under Sir David Willcocks, in Bach’s St. John Passion (with Peter Pears as Evangelist). A few years later he achieved international fame as the soloist in Allegri’s Miserere (reissued, from 1963, on Decca Legends). His mother’s godfather was Sir Malcolm Sargent whom he observed conducting at the Proms in the mid 1960’s. When Goodman completed his studies at the Royal College of Music in London in 1970 he was already well qualified as a conductor, teacher, organist, violinist and musicologist. He is an honorary Doctor of Music, Fellow of the Royal College of Organists and Fellow of the Royal College of Music. From 1971 he spent several years as a High School music teacher, eventually as Director of Music at the University of Kent in Canterbury and as Director of Early Music Studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London. From 1975-1986 much of Goodman’s career was spent as a violinist - working as concertmaster and soloist with Ashkenazy, Brüggen, Ivan Fischer, Gardiner, Herreweghe, Hogwood, Jacobs, Koopman, Mackerras, Marriner, Norrington and Rattle.

Goodman has worked as guest conductor with 90 orchestras and opera companies worldwide.
Opera work has included repertoire by Händel (Agrippina, Alcina, Amadigi, Ezio, Giulio Cesare, Orlando, Rodelinda, Scipione, Tamerlano), Mozart (Bastien et Bastienne, Don Giovanni, La Clemenza di Tito, Le nozze di Figaro) and Beethoven (Leonore) in Lisbon, at the Britten-Pears School in Snape, Fondation Royaumont in Paris and at Opera North in Leeds, Opera Northern Ireland in Belfast, Flanders Opera in Gent and Antwerp, Staatstheater Mainz and as an annual guest from 1990-1998 at the Badisches Staatstheater Händel Festspiele in Karlsruhe. In 1999 he made his debut at the English National Opera with Gluck’s Orpheus and at the Drottningholm Theatre Stockholm with the world première of a new Swedish opera Trädgården by Jonas Forssell. In 2001 he returned to Drottningholm for a new production of Handel's Giulio Cesare, and in 2002 conducted Alcina for Stuttgart, Budapest and San Francisco Opera. He returned to Stuttgart in 2004 (Figaro) and also to San Francisco in 2005 & 2006 (Rodelinda & Figaro).

An invitation to conduct a Haydn programme with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1989 was the catalyst for Roy Goodman’s flourishing career as an international conductor. In the 1980's with the Hanover Band, Goodman recorded for CD the first ever performances on historic instruments of the complete symphonies by Beethoven, Cherubini, Schubert, Schumann and Weber, as well as 60 symphonies by Haydn. He has conducted over 120 CDs - several receiving rosettes in the Penguin CD Guide - ranging from Monteverdi's sacred vocal music to Holst's Planets (played on historical instruments!), including further orchestral and choral works by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Berwald and important baroque works by Purcell, Corelli, Handel and Bach. His CD recordings of the complete Schumann symphonies for RCA have received outstanding critical praise worldwide. Recent CD releases include recordings of Mozart’s basset clarinet concerto with Nicholas Cox and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for ‘RLPO Live’, a CD for Naxos of classical trumpet concertos including Haydn and Hummel (with Niklas Eklund and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra), and recordings of Walton, Grace Williams, Gareth Walters & Warlock with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra for CBC Records. Hot off the press are further CDs for Naxos (orchestral suites by Rameau with the European Union Baroque ORchestra) and CBC Records (Barber Knoxville, Summer of 1915, Copland Eight Songs of Emily Dickinson and songs by Gershwin with Measha Bruggergosman).

Some of Goodman’s more unusual engagements include making a documentary film about Mozart’s Prague Symphony for Dutch television with members of the Prague Chamber Orchestra; a 12 CD recording contract with BMG Classics/RCA Victor after a concert cycle of the complete symphonies of Beethoven in the Schleswig Holstein Festival and Missa Solemnis in the Alte Oper, Frankfurt; conducting the world-premiere of Philip Glass' Concerto for Saxophone Quartet with the Rascher Quartet and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and a televised Sibelius 'birthday' programme with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; an invitation by the Netherlands Wind Ensemble to conduct the Symphony for Winds by Richard Strauss and Schönberg Chamber Symphony 1 for Dutch Radio; a prestigious live televised New Year’s Day concert (1998) with the augmented Netherlands Wind Ensemble from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; concerts including Schumann Symphony 4 at the Carnegie Hall in New York and Beethoven’s Symphony Eroica at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, London; an invitation in 2003 to direct a Mozart Festival in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam; the creation of over forty world-première commissions of contemporary music from Sweden, Iceland, America, Canada & the Netherlands; being the first conductor to conduct the Huddersfield Choral Society (and BBC Philharmonic) in Messiah from memory; playing as soloist in Mozart's G major Violin Concerto at Chicago Symphony Hall; playing the organ at the Royal Festival Hall, London for several Christmas concerts; and playing light piano jazz on national radio from the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Freiburg Concert Hall. Roy Goodman has three children and four grandchildren.

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