Jos van Veldhoven (born 1952, Den Bosch) is a Dutch choral conductor. He studied musicology at the Rijksuniversiteit of Utrecht, and choral and orchestral conducting at the Royal Conservatory, the Hague. He has been artistic director of De Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Netherlands Bach Society) since 1983. In this capacity he regularly gives performances at home and abroad of the major works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his predecessors and contemporaries. In addition he has been the director since 1976 of the Utrechts Barok Consort, which he had founded. With his ensembles he has made a great number of (inter)national radio, television, and CD recordings, and he has appeared in festivals in the Netherlands, many countries in Western Europe, the United States and Japan.
‘Mr. van Veldhoven elicits readings in the best current style, lithe and lithing but also muscular, imaginative and spontaneous.’ (New York Times)
‘Jos van Veldhoven, the top ranking Netherlands choral director’ (NRC Handelsblad)
‘As one of the few Netherlands early music performers, conductor Jos van Veldhoven has retained his all-important pioneering zeal’ (Trouw)
Jos van Veldhoven is a regular guest artist with international orchestras including Das Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn, The Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Telemann Chamber Orchestra, and the Essener Philharmoniker. Together with director Dietrich Hilsdorf, Jos van Veldhoven has been working since 2001 on a cycle of staged Handel oratorios at the Bonn Opera. Van Veldhoven also appears in his native country as a guest conductor, including appearances with Holland Symfonia and Opera Zuid.
In previous years, Jos van Veldhoven has attracted frequent attention with performances of ‘new’ repertoire within the realm of early music. Noteworthy among them were performances of oratorios by Telemann and Graun, Vespers by Gastoldi, Netherlands repertoire of the Golden Age, reconstructions of Bach’s St Mark Passion as well as the so-called Köthener Trauermusik and many unknown 17th century musical dialogues. In addition Jos van Veldhoven conducted a great many contemporary premieres of baroque operas by composers including Mattheson, Keiser, Andrea and Giovanni Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. In 2008 he celebrated his 25th anniversary as artistic director of The Netherlands Bach Society, conducting Joseph Haydn's The Creation.
In addition Jos van Veldhoven is professor of choral conducting at the Amsterdam Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.