STEPHEN ELLERY (Conductor)

In 2009 Stephen Ellery conducted in Poland, Peru, Japan and UK. In September he performed Britten’s War Requiem in Lublin, Poland, with a massed choir from the UK, the Lublin Philharmonic and chamber orchestra, great Polish soloists Izabela Klosinska, Rafal Bartminski, Adam Kruszewski and British conductor Alexander Walker.

With the Locrian Ensemble and the Tallis Chamber Choir he has performed major works such as the Vivaldi Gloria and Mozart’a Requiem at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London.

He works with two youth orchestras, Waltham Forest in London and Gunma Youth Orchestra in Japan. In March 54 Japanese children will come to play a joint concert in Chingford, London.

In August 2010 to celebrate the national day of Kyrgyzstan he will conduct the Gunma Youth Orchestra on tour in Nanking and Shanghai, China, and will be joined by musicians from many Asian countries alongside 10 year old Japanese virtuoso violinist Mone Hattori.

As a saxophone  player he performed on the Berlin Wall in 1989 as it was being taken down and last month went back with Kurt Barling of the BBC to play again to celebrate its 20th anniversary. It was difficult to find the same spot!

Stephen Ellery has worked with orchestras, opera companies and choirs in Japan (Tokyo City Philharmonic, Osaka Philharmonic, Gunma Symphony, Tokatsu Opera, Kansai 21 Century), Latin America (Filarmonica de la ciudad de Mexico, Sinfonica Nacional de Peru) and Europe (Lublin Philharmonic, Kielce Philharmonic, Sofia Festival, Silesian Philharmonic, Olsztyn Philharmonic, Radom Chamber Orchestra, Plock Symphony Orchestra) as well as further afield (Krasnoyarsk Academic Symphony, Hanoi Philharmonic, Calcutta Music Foundation Orchestra) and in the UK with the Locrian Ensemble of London.

As well as with world class solo violinists such as Vadim Brodski, Hamao Fujiwara and Kuba Jakowicz and Peruvian pianist Juan Jose Chuquisengo, he has conducted the first ever performances of works for bagpipe and symphony orchestra with the Scottish composer/bagpiper Lindsay Davidson, and premiered the first ever  Peruvian bassoonist concerto in Australia with the Bulgarian bassoonist Toma Mihailov.

His opera repertoire includes Tosca, La Bohème, Madam Butterfly, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Nabucco, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi Fan Tutte, Evgenii Onegin, Yolanta (Tchaikovsky), Boris Gudonov, The Flying Dutchman, The Medium, Samson et Dalilah, Bluebeard’s Castle, I Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana. His repertoire ranges from the music of Mahler and Bartok to works by Schumann, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart all the way through to Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Berio, Varese, Boulez, Lutoslawski, and Takemitsu .

Stephen Ellery was a pupil of Maestro Ilya Musin in St Petersburg (Russia 1991-95) and Maestro Jerzy Katlewicz in Krakow (Poland 1988-91).  Stephen Ellery was awarded the Special Prize for his conducting of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle in the 2007 Bartok International Opera Conducting Competition held in Romania.

He has previously been a prizewinner as well as the Best Artist and recipient of the Polish Radio Prize at the Fitelberg International Conducting Competition in Poland in 1999.  His languages are Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Polish, French, German, Italian and he is now trying to learn Portuguese. (www.stephenellery.com)