About

Born in London in 1987, Fergus Macleod recently graduated with a degree in music from Cambridge University. Although only in his early 20s, he has already created a big impression making his debut with Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in January 2009 conducting Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Tippet’s Ritual Dances, Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 1 and Debussy’s Prélude à ‘L’après-midi d’un

faune’.

He began studying the violin at the age of three and joined the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain at the age of fourteen at which time he also began his conducting studies with Peter Stark. In 2008 Fergus Macleod was selected as one of only four conductors to work with Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy. He was awarded a fellowship to study at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen Music School in the summer of 2009 where he conducted the Colorado Symphony Orchester and worked together with David Zinman, Murray Sidlin and Nicholas Kraemer.

Having founded the Pindar Ensemble in 2004, Fergus Macleod has gone on to

conduct in venues throughout the UK including St John’s Smith Square, the CBSO Centre, and at the Royal Northern College of Music. In 2005 he was invited to conduct the National Youth Orchestra’s Composers’ Sinfonietta, premiering Shiva Feshareki’s 'To the core of the ocean, there and back in eight steps'.

In the 2007/08 season he conducted Handel’s Xerxes for the newly formed Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera company, both in Cambridge and at Bury St Edmunds’s Theatre Royal, and in the coming season he will participate in English Touring Opera’s HandelFest 2009 project.

Fergus co-founded Ensemble CB3 at Fitzwilliam College which is establishing itself as the major force in contemporary music in Cambridge. The ensemble’s inaugural concert with Fergus conducting Britten’s Sinfonietta and the English premiere of Peter Facer’s Sinfonietta was a great success. This was followed by a portrait of the composer Paul Patterson, who gave his full support and attendance to the project, and for which Fergus commissioned a work from Thomas Hewitt-Jones as well as inviting Jonathan Deakin to play Patterson’s Cello Concerto.

Fergus Macleod conducted the Cambridge University Music Society between 2008 and 2009. Fergus is currently the artistic director of Cambridge University’s New Music Ensemble with whom this season he will conduct works by Vivier, Muhly, Torke and Takemitsu in both the Kettle’s Yard New Music Series and in King’s College Chapel as part of the Concerts at King’s series. Future projects include concerts with the London Chamber Orchestra and City of London Symphonic Wind.

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