Photo: Ben Rice.
Thomas Blunt was appointed chorus master of Glyndebourne in ’06 and made his conducting debut with the company the following year with performances of L’elisir d’amore for Glyndebourne on Tour. This year he will conduct the second half of the run of Falstaff for GOT and further performances for GOT next year. Each year he has conducted opera scenes as part of the Jerwood Chorus Development Scheme, with members of the Glyndebourne Chorus and a chamber orchestra formed from the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He works closely with Vladimir Jurowski the Music Director, and has also collaborated with Mark Elder, Ivàn Fischer, Jirí Belohlávek, Stéphane Denève, Robin Ticciati, Gérard Korsten, and Jakub Hruša. He often works at Glyndebourne as an assistant conductor, assisting Edward Gardner on The Turn of the Screw, Richard Egarr on St Matthew Passion, and Douglas Boyd on Die Zauberflöte. In this year’s Festival he will assist Jurowski on Falstaff and Maurizio Benini on L’elisir.
He studied ‘cello and conducting at the Junior Royal Academy of Music, and was an organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, before studying orchestral conducting at the Royal College of Music with Neil Thomson, where he prepared orchestras for visiting conductors including Bernard Haitink, Andrew Litton, Gianandrea Noseda, Sir Roger Norrington, and Vassily Petrenko. From 2003 – 06, he was Conductor and Musical Director of the South Bank Symphony. Concerts included Brahms Symphony no. 4, Rimsky-Korsakov Sheherazade, Vaughan Williams Symphony no. 5, Shostakovich Symphony no. 5, Sibelius Symphony no. 2, and Rachmaninov Symphony no. 2.
He has taken part in conducting masterclasses with Haitink, and conducted the last nights of the Benjamin Britten International Opera School’s productions of The Rape of Lucretia and Così fan tutte, when he also assisted Michael Rosewell. He assisted Jan Latham-König for the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano production of The Knot Garden, conducted a cover performance of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette with British Youth Opera, and also conducted the première of Ghosts, a Royal Opera House-commissioned ballet by Dave Maric, at the Linbury Studio Theatre. He has conducted the South Bank Sinfonia, Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra, and also the banda in Das klagende Lied for Jurowski and the LPO in their first concert of their new season in the newly-refurbished Royal Festival Hall.