The Director, Errol Girdlestone

Born in England, Errol Girdlestone studied music at Oxford University, after which he received a British Council grant to study conducting in Warsaw.

He began his professional musical career as a singer however, in some of the most prestigious vocal ensembles in London : the Monteverdi Choir, Cantores in Ecclesia, Pro Cantione Antiqua and in particular with the Hilliard Ensemble, of which he was a founder member.

A period spent working at the English National Opera company rekindled his interest in orchestral conducting, and he spent a number of years in South Africa with the Cape Town Opera where he conducted a number of operas and also began to build up a symphonic repertoire. Upon his return to England, he conducted at the English National Opera (Cosi fan tutte) and at the invitation of the Amsterdam, Oslo and Nice Opera companies.

Since 1988 he has lived in France, conducting the Syrinx Concerts Orchestra, the Ensemble Vocal Syrinx, and its professional counterpart Cantores in Vencia. He has also worked for the Festival d'Art Lyrique in Aix-En-Provence, and with the choruses from the Orchestre de Paris, the European Union Opera and the Cologne Opera, and also in Chicago, where he conducted Handel's Semele in 2002. He was invited back to Chicago in 2004 to work on Rossini's Il Viaggio a Rheims and Britten's Death in Venice and again in 2006 for Dido and Aeneas by Purcell. In 2007 he will conduct for the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. 

He is also music director of Musique Cordiale, a European music festival which takes place annually in France and England. In 2005 he conducted Bach's B minor Mass in the south of France and at the Canterbury Festival, and in 2006 he conducted Mozart's Great C minor Mass. In 2007 he will conduct Duruflé's Requiem and Handel's Dixit Dominus.

He has several guest engagements in 2007 with the Wiener-Concertverein. He will appear with them at the the Bregenz festival, and later in the year in the Musikverein in Vienna. His opera engagements for 2007 also include the Merry Widow in Monaco.

With the Ensemble Vocal Syrinx he has conducted several Oratorios : Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion and his Christmas Oratorio, as well as Haydn's Creation, Brahms' German Requeim and L'Enfance du Christ by Berlioz.