About Sir John Eliot Gardiner

John Eliot Gardiner is one of the most versatile conductors of our time. Acknowledged as a key figure in the early music revival, he is the founder and artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Alongside the activities with his own ensembles, John Eliot Gardiner appears regularly as guest conductor with the most important European symphony orchestras, including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras and the London Symphony Orchestra.

The extent of John Eliot Gardiner’s repertoire is illustrated in over 250 recordings made for major European record companies (principally Deutsche Grammophon and Philips Classics), which have received numerous international awards. Over the years Gardiner has won more Gramophone awards than any other artist. Recordings include the six late masses by Haydn as well as the Santiago a Cappella CD, which was released to coincide with his Santiago Pilgrimage tour in summer 2004. Most recently he has released recordings of the Bach Cantatas from the Bach Pilgrimage tour of 2000, on his own record label Soli Deo Gloria. The first release was awarded ‘Gramophone Record of the Year’ in 2005.

In February 2007, Sir John Eliot Gardiner was the subject of a 'Domaine Privé' at Cité de la musique in Paris, a week-long series of events focusing on the music of Rameau and his contemporaries. These included concert performances of Rameau's Castor and Pollux and an exciting collaboration with Buskaid and the Roussat-Lubek dance company which was recently repeated at the BBC Proms.

In autumn 2007 he begins an ambitious project which will conclude in 2008 involving twenty-eight performances of five Brahms-based programmes with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir. December 2007 will see the start of an exciting collaboration between the Monteverdi and Opéra Comique, Paris: John Eliot Gardiner will conduct the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in eight fully-staged performances of Emmanuel Chabrier's Opera bouffe, L'Étoile; he will also return to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden for Simon Boccanegra.

Other plans include a three-year Beethoven cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra and guest appearances with the Czech Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Chicago Symphony Orchestras.

In 1987 John Eliot Gardiner received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lyon, and in 1996 he was nominated Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 1992 he became an Honorary Fellow of both King's College, London, and the Royal Academy of Music. He received a knighthood in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

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