Harry Christophers

Appointed Artistic Director of the Handel and Haydn Society (H+H) in 2008, Harry Christophers began his tenure with the 2009-2010 Season and has conducted H+H each season since September 2006, when he led a sold-out performance in the Esterházy Palace at the Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria. Leading up to the organisation’s 2015 Bicentennial, Christophers and H+H embarked on an ambitious artistic journey with a showcase of works premiered in the United States by H+H since 1815, education programming, community outreach activities and partnerships, and the release of a series of recordings on the CORO label.
  Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the UK-based choir and period instrument orchestra The Sixteen. He has directed The Sixteen throughout Europe, America, and the Asia-Pacific region, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, baroque, and 20th- and 21st-century music. In 2000 he instituted The Choral Pilgrimage, a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury. He has recorded over 140 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including a Grand Prix du Disque, numerous Preise der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Awards), the coveted Gramophone Award for Early Music, and the prestigious Classical Brit Award (2005) for his disc entitled Renaissance. In 2009 he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award; The Sixteen also won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a CD that also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination.
  Harry Christophers is also Principal Guest Conductor of the Granada Symphony Orchestra and a regular guest conductor with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, as well as the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Canterbury Christ Church and Leicester. He was awarded a CBE in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours.