RICHARD HICKOX - President

Richard Hickox, who has long been internationally recognised as one of Britain’s most gifted and versatile conductors, is Music Director of Opera Australia, based at the Sydney Opera House and and at the Victoria Arts Centre, Melbourne.  He is also Principal Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  Hickox has been Associate Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra since 1985 and Music Director of the City of London Sinfonia since 1971.  He was Artistic Director of the Northern Sinfonia between 1982-1990 (now their Conductor Emeritus) and he has been Co-Director of the period instrument group Collegium Musicum 90 since its formation in 1990.  He has regularly conducted the major UK orchestras and has appeared many times at festivals such as Aldeburgh, Bath, Cheltenham and the BBC Proms.

Winner of Gramophone Record of the Year and Best Orchestral disc of 2001 for his recording with the London Symphony Orchestra of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony no.2 in the original version (which also received a Brit Award), Hickox’s position at the centre of British musical life has been recognised by many other awards.  He has received a further 3 Gramophone Awards, a Grammy (for Peter Grimes), two Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the first ever Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award, and the Association of British Orchestras award. He has also been elected an Honorary Fellow of Queens’ College Cambridge, where he was Organ Scholar, and was awarded a Doctorate of Music at Durham University in 2003.

Aside from Sydney, Hickox is a regular guest in major opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera (Billy Budd), Royal Opera House Covent Garden (Paul Bunyan, Billy Budd, Tales of Hoffman, Orfeo ed Euridice, Mithridate, Midsummer Marriage), English National Opera (Dallapiccola, Berio and Alcina), Cologne (Budd),  Washington (Budd) and Los Angeles (Salome, I Montagi e I Capuletti, Rigoletto).  In 2004 BBC Wales televised his Turn of the Screw (Katie Mitchell production for television).  At the Spoleto Festival in Italy (where he was Music Director for 5 years) he has in recent years conducted Rosenkavalier, Cunning Little Vixen, Prokofiev’s War and Peace, and Menotti’s The Consul.

Hickox’s international career has seen him conduct many of the leading orchestras in Europe, Japan and North America, including most recently the Pittsburgh Symphony, Bavarian Radio Symphony, the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Dutch Radio Philharmonic, and Orchestre de Paris, with the New York Philharmonic , Philadelphia Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhaus coming up.  He is a regular guest with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Richard Hickox is committed to an extraordinarily wide range of repertoire, which he conducts with a rare assurance, including over 100 first performances.   Particularly memorable have been a highly acclaimed series of concerts at the Barbican Centre with the London Symphony Orchestra including a number of semi-staged operas such as Billy Budd, Hansel & Gretel and Salomé, the first ever complete cycle of Vaughan Williams symphonies in London with the Bournemouth Symphony, and series of Elgar, Walton and a Britten festival at the Royal Festival Hall with the Philharmonia Orchestra, including a semi-staged performance of his opera Gloriana, which was presented at the Aldeburgh Festival in 2003.

His phenomenal success in the recording studio has resulted in over 250 recordings.  His exclusive association with Chandos Records continues well into the future with the completion of his Britten operas with the City of London Sinfonia and complete cycles of the music of Frank Bridge and Lennox Berkeley with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Richard Hickox was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Jubilee Honours List in 2002, and has received many other awards including two Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, the first ever Sir Charles Groves Award, the Evening Standard Opera Award, and the Association of British Orchestras award.

Richard Hickox is represented by Intermusica.

November 2005, 625 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.

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