Barry Wordsworth
MUSIC DIRECTOR
Barry Wordsworth has been the Music Director of both The Royal Ballet and The Birmingham Royal Ballet since January 1991. He is also the Principal Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra and the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra. As a leading ballet conductor he has worked with several companies besides The Royal Ballet, including Australian Ballet and National Ballet of Canada, with whom he made his Metropolitan Opera House debut in New York prior to conducting for The Royal Ballet there in 1991.
As a symphonic conductor he regularly works with all the major London orchestras, including the London Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, The Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as most of the regional orchestras in the United Kingdom.
In April 1991, he made his debut with The Royal Opera for Carmen and has since also conducted Don Giovanni. He also conducts for the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra, the Halle Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He has toured to Japan with The Royal Ballet and is scheduled to visit Australia.
Wordsworth was appointed Assistant Conductor for the then Royal Ballet Touring Company (later Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and now The Birmingham Royal Ballet)
in 1973, immediately after studying with distinction under Vernon Handley and Sir Adrian Boult at the Royal College of Music. Within a year he was made Principal Conductor of the Company, making his Covent Garden debut with The Royal Ballet in 1975 conducting regularly for both Companies since then.
With the BBC Concert Orchestra, he has toured extensively to the Far East and Europe as well as appearing many times at the Henry Wood Promenade concerts. In 1989, the
year of his appointment as Principal Conductor, he conducted a televised Proms concert and he has conducted two concerts at every Proms Season since then.
Wordsworth has a large catalogue of recordings for many record companies. His recording of Vaughan William's Job with the Philharmonia was highly acclaimed, as was his release of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. He has a longterm association with Decca International.