MICHAEL BAWTREE - conductor

Noted for his versatile musicianship, conductor Michael Bawtree has directed the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera and many performances of Sleeping Beauty (Scottish Ballet) and Nutcracker (Northern Ballet) across the United Kingdom. In his role as assistant music director of the Lyrique-en-Mer Festival in Brittany he has worked on productions of Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto, Cosi fan tutte and Don Pasquale. In Scotland operatic engagements include Albert Herring and La Clemenza di Tito, Flight and the premiere of Gareth Williams’ Love in the Blue Corner. A keen advocate of contemporary music, he has conducted world premieres of operatic, symphonic and choral works by Judith Bingham and Paul Mealor and Scottish premieres of recent works by Magnus Lindberg, Gabriel Jackson, Tarik O’Regan and Richard Busch.

For six seasons Michael Bawtree has been Chorus Director of the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union and Music Director of Glasgow Chamber Choir. He has worked with the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, the RSNO chorus, RSAMD Chamber Choir, the Bury St Edmunds Festival Chorus and the Britten-Pears Chamber Choir, and toured with other choirs across Europe, North America and New Zealand. For five years Michael was Assistant Director of Music at St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Suffolk.

Michael Bawtree studied music and the organ at Christ’s College, Cambridge University, conducting at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and is a prize-winning Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. As an accompanist and continuo player, he has worked with many conductors and performed with the City of London Sinfonia, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia. As organist for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, he has appeared at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, at the BBC Proms and at Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow for performances of Saint-Saens’ Organ Symphony. Solo organ recital engagements have taken him to all the major British cathedrals and to Bermuda, California and Scandinavia. Recent and upcoming engagements include choral concerts in Holland and Germany, performances and a recording of Alexander McCall Smith’s chamber opera Okavango Macbeth, a return to France for La Boheme, organ recitals at St Paul’s Cathedral and Notre- Dame de Paris, and concerts at the Bridgewater Hall, Usher Hall and Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.