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Chris Houlding
Since graduating form London’s
Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 1980, Chris has played the trombone
with most of the Uk’s leading ensembles and under many or the world’s
greatest conductors. Having coached and directed ensembles throughout his career
he is now expanding conducting activities to include concerts in a wide range of
styles including Opera, Symphonic, Contemporary and Chamber. Chris was recently
awarded an MMus in Conducting from the Royal Northern College of Music,
Manchester where he studied under Mark Elder, Mark Shanahan, Gianandrea Noseda,
Martyn Brabbins, Baldur Bronnimann and Clark Rundell.
Conducting engagements have
included concerts with the Orchestra of Opera
North, RNCM Symphony Orchestra, Lancashire Youth Symphony Orchestra,
Huddersfield Philharmonic and the Sinfonia of Leeds, Stravinsky’s Soldier’s
Tale (staged) at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall and performances of
Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi (RNCM) and Puccini’s Turandot (Huddersfield
Town Hall). He is currently Music Director of the Slaithwaite
Philharmonic Orchestra.
Recent conducting engagements
have taken him to the Norwegian Music Academy, Oslo in programme of Britten,
Nyman, Tippett and Maxwell Davies together with appearances with North Cheshire
Concert Band and Derbyshire County Wind Orchestra. As regular Trombone Professor
with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, he often coaches orchestral
brass sections including the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Gustav
Mahler Jungend Orchester. Chris is keen to maintain his connections with the
world of brass bands and has recently directed Grimethorpe Colliery Band,
Brighouse and Rastrck and DUT Yorkshire Imperial Band
with whom he has recorded for Radio and CD and won the First Section National
Brass Band Championship.
As Senior Tutor in Brass at
Manchester’s Royal Northern College of
Music for the past thirteen years he regularly directs ensembles at the
college and at the city’s renowned specialist school, Chetham’s School of
Music. As an established teacher, Chris has given Recitals and Masterclasses at
Juilliard (New York), Eastman School (Rochester), Boston University, Texas and
California in the USA, St. Petersburg, Oslo and London’s Guildhall School of
Music and Drama and Royal College of Music and the Royal Scottish Academy of
Music and Drama in Glasgow. Adjudicating engagements have included the Turkish
Young Musician of the Year, Royal Overseas League Music Competition and the
Norwegian and British Brass Band Championships.
Still active as a professional trombonist and he
has appeared as Guest Principal with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic,
Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and London
Brass and represented the UK in the World Orchestra for Peace under Valery
Gergiev in Russia. He has also recently appeared as soloist with the Durham
Sinfonia (Bourgeois Concerto) and the Orchestra of Opera North in Elgar
Howarths’s Trombone Concerto under the composer on the occasion of his 70th
birthday. A former president of the British
Trombone Society and clinician for the Edwards
Instrument Company, Chris is keen to encourage all players of this
endangered instrument both at events organized by the Society, Education
Authorities and in Orchestras and Ensembles throughout the world.
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