Harry Christophers
Harry Christophers stands among today’s great champions of choral music. In partnership with The Sixteen, he has set benchmark standards for the performance of everything from late medieval polyphony to important new works by contemporary composers.
Under his leadership The Sixteen has established its hugely successful annual Choral Pilgrimage, created the Sacred Music series for BBC television, and developed a renowned period instrument orchestra.
Highlights of their recent work include an Artist Residency at Wigmore Hall, a largescale tour of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, the world premiere of Sir James MacMillan’s Stabat mater, including a live-streamed performance from the Sistine Chapel and the world premiere of his Fifth Symphony at the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival. Their future projects, meanwhile, comprise a series devoted to Purcell and an ongoing survey of Handel’s dramatic oratorios.
Harry Christophers has served as Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society for the past 13 years and has just been appointed their Conductor Laureate. He has worked as guest conductor with, among others, the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsches Kammerphilharmonie. Christophers’ extensive commitment to opera has embraced productions for English National Opera and Lisbon Opera and work with the Granada, Buxton and Grange Park festivals.
Away from the recording studio, he has recently collaborated with BBC Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr Pietsch to produce a book entitled A New Heaven: Choral Conversations in celebration of the group’s 40th anniversary.
Harry Christophers was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s 2012 Birthday Honours list. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has Honorary Doctorates in Music from the Universities of Leicester, Canterbury Christ Church, Northumbria and Kent.
In 2020 he was made President of the Cathedral Music Trust.