Bertie Baigent is Music Director of Waterperry Opera Festival and one of the finalists in the Rotterdam International Conducting Competition 2022 where he will conduct Rotterdam Philharmonic and Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. He won the Orchestra Award at the recent Tokyo International Conducting Competition and returns to Japan in summer 2022 to conduct the NHK Symphony. He also participates in the League of American Orchestras’ Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview in spring 2022.

Recent highlights for Bertie have included debuts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Opera Holland Park; a series of all-Beethoven concerts with the Colorado Symphony (where he was Assistant Conductor from 2018-20); and productions of L’elisir d’amore, Die Zauberflöte, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, Dido and Aeneas and Partenope – directing the latter two from the harpsichord.

Bertie has assisted Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, Jac van Steen and Masaaki Suzuki at the Dallas Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, London Sinfonietta and Britten Sinfonia. He has participated in masterclasses with Martyn Brabbins and Pierre-André Valade, and as part of the Dirigentenforum in Germany.

Born in 1995, Bertie studied at the Royal Academy of Music where he won the Sir Henry Wood Scholarship and Ernest Read Prize. Bertie’s compositions have been awarded commissions and prizes by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the National Centre for Early Music.