 Rosie Johnston is our artistic director. Her opera credits include The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro for European Chamber Opera, Eugene Onegin for the Oxford University Opera Club, Così fan Tutte for Birmingham Conservatoire, Dido and Aeneas for Palace Opera at Holland Park, The Marriage of Figaro at Holland Park and West Side Story for the Manilva Music Festival.She directed the world premiere of The Lovely Ladies for Opera Unlimited in May 2010, and a new production of The Lovely Ladies at The Buxton Festival, 2011. She directed the premiere of The Mad Duchess (Cowdrey, Robinson) at Boughton House in November 2011. She wrote and hosted Opera – Life on the High Cs for KTAO 101.9 in the U.S. for three years.
Rosie is a regular critic and correspondent for Opera Now. Future plans include collaborating on a new work, Albatross, with Peter Cowdrey and Henry Shukman. Rosie is producing and directing an environmental/avian habitat education project for Bury Court Opera, La Cenerentola for Suffolk Opera and a short opera based on Peter Pan for the Dumfries and Galloway Festival, and directing Birdswing – Opera Unlimited’s education project based on birdsong, creativity and technology – in schools across the UK. Rosie is also producing Opera Unlimited’s first birdsong and music tour on Saaremaa Island, Estonia, in May 2013. |
 Composer, conductor, ornithologist and pianist, Peter Cowdrey has been Suffolk Opera’s musical director since 2008. Peter won music scholarships to Winchester College and Trinity College Cambridge, and studied composition with Oliver Knussen. Peter’s works have been premiered at the Istanbul and Schleswig Holstein Festivals, and in the Royal Albert Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room.Recent premieres include a quartet for the Brodskys in Derry, and Sorrowful Glen, a site-specific work for Brass, at Glenborrodale Castle for Loch Shiel Festival. In May 2010, he conducted the premiere of his comic opera The Lovely Ladies, based on Michael Broadbent’s Wine Diaries, at Christies in London for Opera Unlimited.
Peter is founder of The Conference of Birds, which performs music inspired by birdsong over five centuries. He is pianist in the trio Jubovski, which plays classical and folk music inspired by East European gypsies.Recent performances include a series of concerts with The Bristol Ensemble, featuring Peter’s compositions based on East European folk music. In February 2011 he played his 12 Preludes for Pianoat Bad Homburg in Germany. In November 2011 his short opera The Mad Duchess was premiered by Opera Unlimited at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, with Joan Rodgers in the title role. In November 2012 another opera, Albatross, will be premiered at Bury Court Opera in Hampshire. Peter is passionate about birds and birdsong. He has led birdsong and music walks for the travel company ATG Oxford, and is working on a long term project with the sound recording artist Geoff Sample to stretch the boundaries of the relationship between avian and human music. |
 Gill Garside, chorus director, read music at the University of East Anglia, where she studied conducting with Professor Peter Aston. She has worked with all sorts of musical groups, including children’s choirs and amateur orchestras. In 1999, Gill started her own ladies’ choir The Aquarius Singerswhich performs regularly in East Anglia.Last year she became music director of the Edmund Octet. She also teaches piano and singing. Gill is a regular music director for the Bury St Edmunds Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society and has recently conducted The Merry Widow and Bitter Sweet. For Suffolk Opera she trained the chorus for Carmen, La Traviata, La Bohème and La Belle Hélène (the most recent production). |
