Musical Director

Ben Palmer is musical director of the Orchestra of St Paul's, the Bartholdy Chamber Orchestra and Stamford Chamber Orchestra. Throughout the 2011/12 season he will act as assistant conductor to Sir Roger Norrington, working with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. He has conducted Britten Sinfonia and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and is regularly invited to work with some of the UK’s finest amateur orchestras. He makes regular appearances at the Southbank Centre and St John’s, Smith Square, and in 2010 made his debut at the Royal Albert Hall.

2011/12 will see performances with the Orchestra of St Paul's at Purcell Room, St John’s, Smith Square and LSO St Luke’s, and a double-bill of Pierrot lunaire and Façade at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Ben will make his debut at St George’s Bristol with Brandon Hill Chamber Orchestra, and will return to conduct Birmingham University Symphony Orchestra in a programme including Stravinsky’s Symphony in C.

Ben is in great demand as a choral conductor, and is musical director of The Syred Consort, Woking Choral Society, Kingston Orpheus Choir and South West Essex Choir. Recent repertoire includes Verdi Requiem, The Dream of Gerontius, Israel in Egypt and Bach’s St John Passion, Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B minor. Forthcoming performances include Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Tippett’s A Child of Our Time. His opera work includes productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Die Zauberflöte, Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, Dido and Aeneas and Die Fledermaus.

Recent highlights include the Lambert Piano Concerto with David Owen Norris (the opening concert of the 2011 English Music Festival), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Mahler songs with Roderick Williams at St John’s, Smith Square, and, with the Wolsey Orchestra, the first large-scale symphonic concert to take place in The Apex, the new concert hall in Bury St Edmunds.

A trumpeter and composer by training, Ben studied music at the University of Birmingham, graduating with first class honours in 2003. He stayed on at Birmingham to complete an MPhil in composition with Vic Hoyland, before moving to London in 2005 to study at the Royal Academy of Music with Simon Bainbridge. Ben has conducted orchestral concerts throughout the UK and in China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and the Seychelles.

Plans for 2012/13 include his debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and returns to Purcell Room and St John’s, Smith Square, all with the Orchestra of St Paul's, and a second invitation to conduct the Ipswich-based Wolsey Orchestra. It is Ben’s lifetime ambition to conduct all the Haydn symphonies.