Congratulations to AF Fellow Gregory Batsleer, who has been announced as the new Director of The London Handel Festival!
Gregory has been working at the very highest levels of the classical music industry for over a decade and has built a strong reputation as both an innovative leader and an acclaimed conductor.
From 2012 to 2017, Gregory was Artistic Director of the National Portrait Gallery’s Choir in Residence programme, the first ever in-house music programme of any gallery or museum in the world. He has curated and devised performances for the Southbank Centre, Wilderness Festival and Latitude and collaborated with leading cultural figures across art forms. In 2017, Gregory co-founded Future Stages, a charity dedicated to providing pathways into the performing arts for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and he is also co-founder and Artistic Director of Festival Voices, a versatile ensemble dedicated to cross-art collaboration. As a non-executive director, Gregory is on the boards of the Piece Hall in Halifax and Manchester Camerata.
As a performer, Gregory has conducted leading ensembles throughout the UK including his work as Chorus Director of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Principal Conductor of the Huddersfield Choral Society.
Gregory says:
“I am thrilled to have been appointed the new Festival Director of the London Handel Festival. Handel’s music has an extraordinary ability to inspire and speak to 21st-century London. As we emerge from a cultural hibernation, I’m incredibly excited for what we can achieve. This will be a new and innovative chapter for the Festival in which we aim to be the go-to destination for the performance of Handel’s music, and in turn contribute to London’s reputation for boundary-pushing creativity.”
