Conductor

Dominic Grier is rapidly becoming acknowledged as a young conductor of exceptional talent, whose emerging career already embraces opera, ballet and symphonic work as well as contemporary music and orchestral training. He was a permanent staff conductor at the Royal Opera House from 2008-10, where his work included guest and cover conducting with The Royal Ballet and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, and an affiliation with the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme. He is currently Associate Guest Conductor with Northern Ballet, a guest conductor for The Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, Music Director and Principal Conductor of the King's College London Symphony Orchestra, and Principal Conductor of the London Academy Premire Sinfonia.

He made his Royal Opera House conducting debut with Walton’s Façade in October 2008 and his début with The Royal Ballet in Sir Kenneth Macmillan’s Concerto in March 2010. He works regularly as Assistant Conductor at the Opéra National de Lyon where his repertoire has included Siegfried (2007), Porgy and Bess (2008 and 2010) and Death in Venice (2009), and made his guest conducting début there to critical acclaim with the French premiere of Copland’s The Tender Land in March 2010. He was Assistant Conductor for the British Youth Opera production of Albert Herring during its 2007 season, and served as Music Director of the Ashover Festival Orchestra in September 2005 and 2006. He is also increasingly active as a teacher of conducting, and was Tutor in Undergraduate Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music from 2009 to 2011.

Dominic has conducted repertoire sessions or rehearsals with the BBC Philharmonic, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of Opera North, the Bamberger Symphoniker, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Montpellier the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble and the Paragon Ensemble. He has also conducted the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera in concert at the ROH as well as serving as guest or rehearsal conductor for numerous London-based orchestras including the Southbank Sinfonia, Orpheus Sinfonia, Academy Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra of the City, University of London Symphony Orchestra, Forest Philharmonic, London Charity Orchestra, Morley College Chamber Orchestra, Hayes Symphony Orchestra and the Nonesuch Orchestra. He served as Principal Conductor of the London International Orchestra of Academia from 2006-2008 and as Music Director of his own Manfred Ensemble – a chamber orchestra specialising in historically-informed performances of nineteenth-century music – from 2000-2006. He is also Artistic Advisor to the London Fine Arts Orchestra.

Dominic read music at the University of Cambridge and went on to study conducting at the Royal Academy of Music under the tuition of Colin Metters, Sir Colin Davis, George Hurst and Mark Shanahan. He graduated with distinction and was awarded the prestigious DipRAM for outstanding final performances and the Fred Southall Memorial Prize. He has also received tuition from Martyn Brabbins, Charles Peebles and Sian Edwards on the 2005 and 2006 Orkney Conducting Courses. He is fortunate to enjoy the support of Royal Ballet Music Director, Barry Wordsworth, with whom he worked closely at the Royal Opera House.

While at Cambridge, Dominic held the positions of Principal Conductor of the Cambridge University Symphony Orchestra and Assistant Conductor of the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra, appearing regularly in Cambridge and London venues, as well as on tour in Germany and Hungary. He also served as Chairman and Music Director of the Cambridge University Opera Society, mounting productions including Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer.

Dominic worked extensively within the Royal Academy of Music on various projects, and conducted all the main orchestras and ensembles in concerts and rehearsals. He enjoyed a particularly close association with Royal Academy Opera, serving both as Music Director for performances of The Magic Flute at the Clonter Opera Theatre in March 2005, and as Assistant Conductor to Sir Colin Davis and Nicholas Braithwaite.

He has been particularly active in the field of contemporary music, and has given a number of world premieres of compositions by RAM students in London as well as at the Oxford Lieder Festival. He also directed a major concert in the RAM/South Bank Centre Sir Peter Maxwell Davies festival in 2005 and conducted the Academy’s Manson Ensemble at the 2007 ‘Sounds New’ Festival in Canterbury in music by Paul Patterson. He has worked as coach to the Ossian Ensemble, and led this group in performances of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in March 2007 and February 2010.

He is also active as a musicologist and his research interests include historical performance practice, the ‘Finale Problem’ in the nineteenth-century symphony and the relationships between analysis and performance. He recently delivered papers at the Royal Academy of Music as part of its ‘Barbirolli Lectures’ series on the work of Otto Klemperer and on British approaches to the performance of the Sibelius symphonies, and also conducted an interview with Jonathan Del Mar on his editions of the Beethoven symphonies.

Dominic is an experienced orchestral musician and singer, and was principal trumpet with the Bromley Youth Symphony Orchestra and Concert Band and various university orchestras and ensembles. He also gave lieder recitals while at Cambridge, and was a member of the Girton College Chapel Choir. He currently sings as a countertenor in the choir of St. George’s, Beckenham. His formal musical education began after winning a scholarship as a cellist to the Centre for Young Musicians in London, and he subsequently studied piano, organ, trumpet, singing and composition. He served as Musician in Residence at Sevenoaks School in Kent in 2006-7 and was a major prizewinner in the 2006 National Association of Youth Orchestras/Allianz Cornhill Conducting Competition.

Future work this season includes performances of 'Hamlet', 'Cleopatra' and 'The Nutcracker' for Northern Ballet; 'The Sleeping Beauty' for Scottish Ballet; 'Grand Tour' and 'The Dream' for Birmingham Royal Ballet; 'The Nutcracker' for The Royal Ballet and concerts with the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy, the Orpheus Sinfonia and the London Academy Premiere Sinfonia.

Dominic Grier is represented by Athole Still International, www.atholestill.com
Contact: Margaret Levine - margaret@atholestill.co.uk