Garry Walker
Scottish-born Garry Walker studied at the Royal Northern College of Music and in July 1999 won the Sixth Leeds Conductor’s Competition. In October 1999 he replaced at very short notice an indisposed Daniele Gatti in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s opening concert of their Barbican season and thus began an ongoing relationship resulting in his appointment as Permanent Guest Conductor, a post he recently relinquished. Garry Walker was Principal Conductor of Paragon Ensemble and now enjoys a close association with Red Note Ensemble, Scotland’s premier contemporary music ensemble.
In the UK Garry Walker has worked with all the BBC orchestras, the Hallé, National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, English Northern Philharmonia, London Sinfonietta, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Chamber orchestras have included the Northern Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra and Academy of St Martin’s in the Fields. With SCO he has appeared at the St Magnus Festival, with the ECO in Lisbon and the City of London Festival and with ASMF at the Barbican’s Mostly Mozart Festival. He regularly appears at the Edinburgh Festival and in 2004 conducted a notable performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Outside the UK he has appeared with the Nieuw Ensemble, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin. In 2007 he made his debut with Collegium Musicum in Denmark and was invited to return in 2008 and 2009. In 2008 he made a very successful début with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to which he returned in April 2011.
An experienced opera conductor, Garry Walker has most recently conducted Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart for English National Opera to huge critical acclaim. He has conducted Britten’s Curlew River at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival, and the following year the world première of Stuart Macrae’s opera The Assassin Tree which he subsequently conducted at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio. In 2007 he made his début with English National Opera in David McVicar’s much acclaimed production of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and in 2008 conducted Cimarosa’s The Secret Marriage for Scottish Opera and Curlew River for Lyon Opera.
In May 2011 Garry Walker will conduct the Musikcollegium Winterthur, in June a new production of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and in October a new production by Clixto Bieito of Hosakawa’s Hanjo at the Ruhr Triennale.
