Adam Gatehouse

Adam Gatehouse was born in London and began studying the piano at the age of four. He entered the Royal College of Music in London at the age of eleven, studying piano and clarinet.

After graduating with a degree in Music and English, he studied conducting at the Guildhall School of Music in London, where his teachers included Sir Adrian Boult and Andre Previn.

In 1974 he was appointed Musical Director of Ballet Rambert, Britain's oldest dance company, and in the subsequent four years conducted over 600 performances with them throughout Britain and abroad.

He made his debut in Holland in 1977 and was immediately invited to become Music Director and Principal Conductor of the Dutch National Ballet. He has conducted many of Holland's orchestras, including three of the radio orchestras with whom he has regularly broadcast.

From 1980 to 1990 he was Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Dutch National Youth Orchestra, which he built into one of the most prestigious youth orchestras in Europe with highly acclaimed performances of Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler, Bartok and Stravinsky, and with whom he made many foreign tours to Italy, Greece, Spain, Belgium and Great Britain.

In 1982, Adam made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducting with the Royal Ballet, to which he returned in 1990. In 1983 he debuted in New York with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 1990 he conducted a new production of Mozart's 'La Finta Giardiniera' in Holland, and from 1988-1991 he was also artistic advisor to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Since 1991, Adam has been a producer and is now Editor Live Music with BBC Radio 3. In this capacity he has worked with many of the leading artists of the time such as Shura Cherkassky, the Alban Berg Quartet, Mitsuko Uchida, Itzak Perlman, Barbara Bonney and Ian Bostridge.

Adam was appointed conductor of Ipswich Orchestral Society in 2000 and over 10 seasons has developed the orchestra, conducting them in a wide and challenging range of repertoire, including symphonies by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Mahler and Bruckner and concertos by Beethoven, Brahms, Elgar and Rachmaninov. He has also attracted leading international soloists to work with the orchestra including John Lill, Noriko Ogawa, Alina Ibragimova,  Julian Lloyd Webber, Michael Collins and Nicola Benedetti.

Adam was also the Founder and Director of the internationally acclaimed Festival de Valloires in Picardy, France.