RICHARD LAING

Richard Laing is one of the UK’s foremost choral conductors. He is director of Nottingham Harmonic Choir and Leicester Bach Choir, and has frequently undertaken choral preparation and off-stage conducting for orchestras such as the Hallé and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in works such as Alexander Nevsky, Belshazzar’s Feast, The Planets, Carmina Burana and Poulenc’s Gloria, assisting conductors including Sir Mark Elder, Christian Mandeal and Gergely Madaras. Richard is much in demand as a leader of choral workshops and as a guest conductor with choirs around the country; his repertoire encompasses over 400 works in nine languages and he has frequently introduced concerts in German and in French.

Richard also has a busy schedule of orchestral conducting. He is principal guest conductor of Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra, associate conductor of Chandos Symphony Orchestra, director of Leamington Chamber Orchestra, a frequent guest with Hallam Sinfonia in Sheffield and the Wolsey Orchestra in Suffolk, and he regularly works with the Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra da Camera and Southern Sinfonia. Other engagements include Ballet Cymru, Dartington Festival Opera and Kent Opera. Richard is an external examiner in orchestral conducting at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, where as the Sinfonia Viva Conducting Scholar he graduated in 2002 after just nine months of study, being awarded a Masters degree, a Postgraduate Diploma and the Postgraduate Prize. Subsequently he was appointed associate conductor of the virtuoso young ensemble Sinfonia Cymru. Prior to taking up the baton Richard studied violin at the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Illinois.

A true polymath, Richard has presented papers at conferences in America and Australia on subjects as diverse as apocalyptic cinema, the graphic artist M.C. Escher, reality TV and Wagner’s Ring cycle; during the Covid pandemic he completed courses in Astronomy from Caltech and in Relativity from Stanford, and while still an undergraduate he won the Kaiser Award for American History. He writes programme notes for concerts and festivals around the country, and contributes articles and reviews to international music journals and blogs. In 2022 Richard was appointed reviews editor of The Wagner Journal and elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society for Arts and the Royal Astronomical Society.