Since September 2006 Benjamin Bayl has been Assistant Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, working alongside Music Director Iván Fischer. He is also currently the Assistant Artistic Director of The Gabrieli Consort, collaborating with Paul McCreesh.

Born in Sydney in 1978, Benjamin Bayl studied at King’sCollege Cambridge, where he was Organ Scholar and from where he graduated with first class Honours. He then studied at The Guildhall School of Music and National Opera Studio as a repetiteur (sponsored by The Musicians’ Benevolent Fund, The Ian Potter Cultural Trust and The Australia Council), Schola Cantorum Basel as a harpsichordist and The Royal Academy of Music as a conductor (Sir CharlesMacKerras Scholarship), where his professors included Colin Metters, George Hurst and Sir Colin Davis; he also conducted in masterclasses with John Adams and Jorma Panula.

Recent conducting engagements have included Il mondo della luna for Iford Opera Festival; appearances with The Gabrieli Consort in their series at Christ Church Spitalfields; several concerts with Orchestra of the City (a non-professional orchestra for music graduates) as Music Director, and concerts with The New London Orchestra, Guildford Philharmonic, European Union Baroque Orchestra, Belsize Baroque and London Chorus. He regularly conducts the Budapest Festival Orchestra in rehearsal, assisting not only Iván Fischer but visiting conductors such as András Schiff, Oliver Knussen and Osmo Vänskä. Last year he conducted the European première of Sir John Tavener’s Lament for Jerusalem with Orchestra of the City and The Rodolfus Choir, to critical acclaim.

Future conducting engagements include Orlando for Opera Australia in Melbourne, Handel Brockes Passion for Wratislavia Cantans Festival in Poland, and concerts with the Australian and Sydney Youth Orchestras for World Youth Day 2008, in the presence of the Pope. As an assistant conductor, he will work with Paul McCreesh (Tamerlano, Teatro Real Madrid), Trevor Pinnock (Orlando, Sydney), Richard Hickox (Così fan tutte, Sydney), Harry Bicket (L’incoronazione di Poppea, Liceu Barcelona), Attilio Cremonesi (Juditha Triumphans, Sydney) and Masaaki Suzuki (B minor Mass, Aldeburgh), also playing continuo for all of these performances.

Benjamin has worked widely in the world of opera and oratorio as an assistant conductor and continuo player, most recently with Richard Hickox (Giulio Cesare, Sydney Opera House); Harry Bicket (Fairy Queen, Aldeburgh and Ariodante, Barcelona); Paul McCreesh (The Creation, with Orquestra Nacional de Espana, Madrid); Harry Christophers (Semele, Hercules and Ascanio in Alba, Buxton Festival and Dido & Aeneas, Barcelona); Laurence Cummings (King Arthur, Aldeburgh); Gary Cooper (Orlando, Sadler’s Wells); John Rutter, (Messiah, RPO); and Christian Curnyn (Saul, Opera North). He also conducted The Little Magic Flute at Opera North. He was assistant conductor for British Youth Opera, making his conducting debut in the QEH with Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the Guildhall he conducted Rossini’s La scala di seta.

He joined the music staff of the Royal Opera, Covent Garden on Turandot, La forza del destino and La fanciulladel West with Antonio Pappano, and was repetiteur for the world première of 1984, conducted and composed by Lorin Maazel; a revival is planned in Valencia in October. He has played with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera (Boris Godunov, Ariadne auf Naxos and Handel’s Alceste) and has been repetiteur for ENO and ETO. He assisted Gareth Jones on The Mikado at ENO and was Chorus Master of Opera Holland Park in 2004 and 2005, rehearsing Luisa Miller, Macbeth, La sonnambula, Eugene Onégin and Andrea Chenier. He played for Sir Simon Rattle and the CBSO Chorus, in preparation for their recording of Mahler’s Symphony no.8.

Benjamin founded and conducts The Saraband Consort, an ensemble specialising in music of the 17th and18th centuries on period instruments. With them he made his Wigmore Hall debut as part of The King’s Consort Young Artists’ Series, and they have also appeared in the Winchester and Cambridge Festivals; at the British Museum’s Michelangelo exhibition; they recently gave sellout performances, under his direction, of Monteverdi Vespers and Bach St.Matthew Passion in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. This year, are cording of Bach keyboard works arranged for the group is planned, as well as a tour to Croatia and Montenegro; the ensemble have also just been selected as finalists in the 2007 York International Early Music Competition. Elsewhere, Benjamin performs, tours and records with The Gabrieli Consort, The King’s Consort, The Sixteen, The Symphony of Harmony and Invention, Ex Cathedra, His Majesties Sackbutts & Cornetts, BBC Singers, Polyphony, Northern Sinfonia, RPO, LSO and CBSO, appearing at festivals such as The Proms, Mostly Mozart at the Lincoln Centre New York, Ravinia and Aldeburgh.