Grant Llewellyn, Music Director

Music Director of the North Carolina Symphony and Principal Conductor of the Handel & Haydn Society, Grant Llewellyn is renowned all over the world for his exceptional charisma, energy and easy authority in music of all styles and periods. Born in Tenby, South Wales, Llewellyn won a Conducting Fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Center in Massachusetts in 1985 where he worked with such major artists as Bernstein, Ozawa, Masur and Previn. As Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra he conducted concerts at the Tanglewood Festival and the Boston Subscription Series as well as concerts in the Boston Pops.
Llewellyn began his tenure as North Carolina Symphony Music Director in 2004 after a 32-month international search. The Symphony’s fifth music director since its organization in 1932, his sophisticated perspective has captured the interest and imagination of everyone he encounters. Critics and audiences alike have noted the passion and concentration of the orchestra under his baton and praise his “transcendent performances,” “masterful pacing and control,” and his “graceful and expressive direction.”
To date, Grant Llewellyn has held positions with three European orchestras: Principal Conductor of the Royal Flanders Philharmonic, Principal Guest Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and Associate Guest Conductor with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Notable recent European guest engagements have included the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony, the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart and the Helsinki Philharmonic. He has also conducted the Johannesburg (South Africa) Symphony Orchestra..
Llewellyn retains close links with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with whom he continues to undertake numerous television, radio and recording projects. In September 2004 he was invited by the BBC Proms to conduct the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the Royal Albert Hall, with a program including the world premiere of Joby Talbot’s Sneaker Waves and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9. In 2002, Llewellyn’s conducting career became the subject of a BBC Wales TV documentary.
Grant Llewellyn has conducted many major North American orchestras, including the symphonies of Boston, Houston, Montreal, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, Calgary and Toronto. His appearance in 2003-2004 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra included a major new work by Thea Musgrave commissioned by the orchestra. In 2005-2006 he returned to the Calgary Philharmonic and made debuts with the Colorado Symphony as well as the Florida Orchestra. Llewellyn’s first complete season as Music Director of the North Carolina Symphony included a series of concerts called “Crossing the Atlantic” featuring composers and works from the United States and the United Kingdom.
As Music Director of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s leading period orchestra, from 2000-2006, Llewellyn quickly gained a reputation as a formidable interpreter of music of the Baroque and classical periods. Among the highlights of recent seasons of the Handel & Haydn Society were staged performances of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in collaboration with Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng, and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with James Gilchrist as Evangelist.
An equally accomplished opera conductor, Grant Llewellyn has appeared at the opera companies of English National Opera (The Magic Flute) and the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, where his repertoire has ranged from Alexander Goehr’s Arianna to The Magic Flute and Handel Radamisto. In 2001, Llewellyn embarked on a collaboration with the acclaimed Chinese director Chen-Shi Zheng in a production of Dido and Aeneas at Spoleto Festival U.S.A. This was followed by a staged version of Monteverdi’s Vespers with the Handel & Haydn Society. In 2003, Llewellyn made his debut with Opera North in a new production of Massenet’s Manon and in June 2005 he conducted at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, one of the world’s most prestigious singing competitions.
Grant Llewellyn lives in Cardiff with his wife Charlotte and their four children.