Sir Roger Norrington – President
The CRSO is honoured to have the well-known British conductor Sir Roger Norrington as its President. Sir Roger studied at Clare College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music. In 1962 he founded the Schütz Choir and from from 1969 to 1984 was music director of Kent Opera. In 1978, Sir Roger founded the London Classical Players, a group that was to have an enormous influence on performance practice of Mozart and Beethoven in particular. Sir Roger has been Chief Conductor of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony, St Luke’s Chamber Orchestra in New York, the Salzburg Camerata, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta. He has regularly conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, as well as many other foreign and British orchestras and opera companies.
Peter Bassano – Music Director
Peter Bassano is descended from a family of six Venetian musician brothers brought to England by King Henry VIII in 1540. Peter studied trombone and singing at the Royal College of Music, where shortly after joining London’s Philharmonia Orchestra he was appointed a professor. In addition to his symphonic career, he took a keen interest in early music was a member of Paul McCreesh’s Gabrieli Consort and His Majesties Sagbutts and Cornetts. Whilst continuing playing he took conducting lessons from Sir John Eliot-Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Elgar Howarth, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Roger Norrington, Jorma Panula and Bram Tovey. He became a staff conductor and Head of Brass Faculty of the RCM in 1990, a post he held until August 2004. Peter has subsequently been Music Director of the Oxford University Sinfonietta, The Virtuosi of the Mannheim Court, The Gentlemen of the Chappell, The Equale Baroque Players, Wendover Choral Society, City of Cambridge Band, Oxford Touring Opera and the CRSO. He has appeared as guest conductor with the Helsinki Philharmonic, Royal Omani Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, the State Symphony Orchestra of Mexico as well as at many conservatoires, choirs and bands around the world.
Julian Milone – Concert Leader
After studying the violin and composition at the Royal College of Music, Julian joined the first violin section of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the tender age of twenty- one before becoming a member of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 1983, a position he continues to hold.
Away from the Philharmonia he plays in András Schiff’s hand- picked chamber orchestra, the Cappella Andrea Barca, in violin ensemble concerts with his group, ‘4 Violins & A Bass’, is Head of Strings at King’s Rochester and a professor for Kent Music.
His compositions and arrangements have been performed by orchestras and groups throughout the world, directed by conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, David Robertson, Mikael Pletnev and Carl Davis. Recent arrangements have been recorded for EMI by Alison Balsom and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner, and by cellist Natalie Clein with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Vernon Handley.
Julian Milone’s work has appeared on the Australian documentary, ‘4’, based on Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ and at the wedding of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker-Bowles, for which he arranged the music. His works have also been performed at US festivals by Gil Shaham and Cho-Liang Lin, in Amsterdam and Cape Town by Ivry Gitlis and Daniel Rowland and by Janine Jansen at her festival in Dubrovnik.