Jeffrey Tate

Jeffrey Tate, CBE, (born April 28, 1943, Salisbury) is an English conductor. He was born with spina bifida, and also has kyphosis. His family moved to Farnham, Surrey when he was young and he attended Farnham Grammar School between 1954 and 1961 gaining a State Scholarship to Cambridge University, where he directed theatre productions. Tate initially read medicine at Christ's College, Cambridge (1961–64), specializing in eye surgery. He later worked at St Thomas's Hospital, London, before giving up his clinical career to study music at the London Opera Centre. He became a repetiteur and a coach at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under the tutelage of Sir Georg Solti. [cite news | author=David Blum| title=Bucking the Biggest Odds of All | url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402EFDC1F3AF93AA25755C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all | work=New York Times | date=19 June 1994 | accessdate=2007-10-12]

Tate's international conducting début was with the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1979. In 1985, he was appointed the first principal conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra. He was named to the position of principal conductor of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden effective in September 1986, the first person in the House's history to have that title. [cite news | title=Royal Opera Appoints Tate as Top Conductor| url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DEEDF1538F935A35751C1A962948260 | work=New York Times | date=6 December 1984 | accessdate=2007-10-12] He was principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 1991 to 1995. In 2005, he was appointed music director of the San Carlo Theatre of Naples. Tate's recordings include a series of Mozart piano concertos with Mitsuko Uchida. [cite news | author=Dinitia Smith | title=Rapturous Sorrow From a Pianist of Intellectual Rigor | url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E4D71F3DF93BA35757C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all | work=New York Times | date=8 April 1997 | accessdate=2007-10-12]

Tate has been president of UK Spina Bifida charity ASBAH since 1989. A portrait of Jeffrey Tate is in David Blum's book "Quintet, Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment" (Cornell University Press, 1999). It originally appeared as an article in the 30 April 1990 issue of "The New Yorker".

In November 2007, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Tate as its next chief conductor, as of the spring of 2008. [cite news | author=Kevin Shihoten | title=Jeffrey Tate Replaces Andrey Boreyko as Hamburg Symphony Chief Conductor | url=http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/7313.html | work=Playbill Arts | date=5 November 2007 | accessdate=2007-11-07]

References

External links

* [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=41:56158~T1 Biography from allmusic]
* [http://www.teatrosancarlo.it/english/home.html Theatre San Carlo]
* [http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/alumni/pieces/pieces_3.pdf Pieces, 2002 (article in Christ's College newsletter)]
* [http://www.asbah.org/About%20ASBAH/Jeffrey%20Tate%20CBE.html ASBAH]