John Eliot Gardiner
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Sir John Eliot Gardiner CBE (born April 20, 1943, Fontmell, Dorset, England) is an English conductor. Gardiner has recorded over 250 albums. He founded the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. He is most famous for his interpretations of Baroque music on period instruments, but his discography includes a wide range of Classical and Romantic music including all nine of Beethoven's symphonies, Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, and Verdi's Falstaff. As guest conductor, Gardiner has appeared with the Philharmonia, Boston, Cleveland, Royal Concertgebouw and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras.
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[edit] Career highlights
- Gardiner began conducting at age fifteen. As an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge he studied history and Arabic. After graduating, he studied music with Thurston Dart at King's College London and later with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
- While still at Cambridge he founded the Monteverdi Choir, with whom he made his conducting debut at the Wigmore Hall in London in 1966.
- In 1968, Gardiner formed the Monteverdi Orchestra as a complementary body to the Monteverdi Choir. In 1978, they became the English Baroque Soloists.
- John Eliot Gardiner made his London opera debut with Die Zauberflöte in 1969 at the English National Opera, and he first appeared at Covent Garden in 1973 conducting Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride.
- His American debut came in 1979 when he conducted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
- From 1980 to 1983 he was lead conductor of Canada's CBC Radio Orchestra.
- In 1990, Gardiner formed a new period instrument orchestra to perform music of the 19th century, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. In 1993, they gave the modern première of Berlioz's Messe solennelle from a manuscript lost for over 150 years
- Upon the occasion of the Monteverdi Choir's 25th anniversary in 1989, Gardiner led them on a world tour giving performances of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610.
- In 1998, John Eliot Gardiner was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
- In 2000, Gardiner set out on his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing, over a 52-week period, all of Bach's sacred cantatas in churches around Europe and the United States.
- In late 2004, Gardiner toured Spain with the Monteverdi Choir performing pieces from the Codex Compostelanus in cathedrals and churches along the Camino de Santiago.
[edit] Family
Gardiner was married to violinist Elizabeth Wilcock from 1981 to 1997; they have three daughters. In 2001 he married Isabella de Sabata, granddaughter of conductor Victor de Sabata [1]. In his spare time, Gardiner runs an organic farm in North Dorset, which was set up by his great uncle, composer Henry Balfour Gardiner.
[edit] Reference
George Pratt. "Gardiner, Sir John Eliot." Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy, grovemusic.com (subscription access).
[edit] External links
- John Eliot Gardiner (Conductor) — Short Biography
- Monteverdi Productions website
- ibidem - Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and John Eliot Gardiner)
- Soli Deo Gloria (SDG) web presentation including a concordance covering all of Bach's vocal works recorded by John Eliot Gardiner
- Interview with John Eliot Gardiner
| Preceded by no predecessor |
Music Director, Opéra National de Lyon 1983–1988 |
Succeeded by Kent Nagano |
| Preceded by Günter Wand |
Chief Conductor, North German Radio Symphony Orchestra 1991–1994 |
Succeeded by Herbert Blomstedt |
