Professor David Drummond,

Royal College of Music & Royal Academy of Music

London, United Kingdom

David Drummond is a professor on the coaching staff at both the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London.  He has conducted opera for English National Opera, Gothenburg Opera, Scottish Opera, and Kharkov Opera in the Ukraine.  He has also worked with a  number of world-renowned orchestras including the London Mozart Players, the Kharkov Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brandenburg Sinfonia, and the BBC Concert Orchestra, the later with whom he recorded the BBC’s “Olympics 2000” music.  From 1991 – 2001 David served as Director of Music & Opera at University College, London where he conducted the world première of Cesar Franck’s Hulda as well as three other British premières including Sallinen’s Kullervo.  Other operas David has conducted include Cosi fan Tutti, Don Giovanni, Katerina Ismailova, Turn of the Screw, Carmen, The Lighthouse, The Merry Widow, Porgy & Bess; Die Fledermaus, The Mikado, The Magic Flute, Street Scene, Le Roi d’Ys, Ruslan & Ludmilla, La Wally, Mignon, I Gioelli della Madonna, Mazeppa, The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Drot og Marsk and Boris Godunov.

Since 1996 David has been Musical Director of the renowned London Oriana Choir and has conducted this acclaimed group at all of London’s major venues, including the Royal Festival Hall, the Queen Elisabeth Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, and just last year, at the Barbican Center in a critically acclaimed performance of Elijah with Sir Thomas Allen in the title role.  David has also worked with choirs throughout Britain which led to him adjudicating for the BBC Radio 3 “Choir of the Year” Competition.  His choral arrangements have been commissioned by songwriters such as Beth Nielsen Chapman and rock legend Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, with whom he performed at the famous Abbey Road Studios in February 2010. Other highlights of David’s career have been conducting Adrian Snell’s anti-war work “The Cry – A Requiem for the Lost Child” in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2008 (which raised £30,000 for Save the Children),  Star Wars in the O2 Arena and at Hampton Court Palace, the later a special performance in June, 2010 for Mikhail Gorbachev and guests such as Vanessa Redgrave, Hugh Grant and Simon le Bon. David has also been responsible for two world premiere oratorio recordings: the award-winning masterpiece Everyman by Walford-Davies and last year another first – Armstrong-Gibbs’ Odysseus with the BBC Concert Orchestra.