News
Gabrieli Scholarship winner 05.01.06
Benjamin Bayl is the first recipient of the new Gabrieli Scholarship for Assistant Artistic Director.
This year sees the launch of the first Gabrieli Scholarship for Assistant Artistic Director generously funded jointly by the Gabrieli Trust and the Worshipful Company of Musicians, and won by Benjamin Bayl. The aim is to offer candidates with outstanding potential the opportunity to acquire skills appropriate to a future career as a music director, through practical work. Over the next year Benjamin will work closely with Paul McCreesh, assisting him in research, music preparation and programming. Involved in all artistic aspects of the ensemble, there will also be the opportunity to gain the business skills that are so vital to the survival of any independently funded artistic endeavour.
Paul McCreesh said: "I have long felt the need to help bring on the next generation of conductors interested in historical performance. From a highly talented pool of candidates, Ben's passion, dedication and wide experience in many areas of repertoire all mark him out as someone with a great future. I am hugely looking forward to working with him and I’m sure he will be an enormous asset to the ensemble during the year and, in time, to the early music movement in general."
Benjamin Bayl graduated from Cambridge in 2000, and subsequently studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio. His current conducting studies at the Royal Academy of the Music (and are generously supported by the Australian Music Foundation, with whom he holds the Sir Charles MacKerras Conducting Award). He has gained considerable experience as an opera assistant and repetiteur, has performed widely as a harpsichordist and organist, and has worked as a conductor. "The Gabrieli Consort is an ensemble whose music-making I have admired for years, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity to work so closely with its musicians and with Paul McCreesh. I hope that what I learn will be helpful in developing my own ensemble, the Saraband Consort."