He is also Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, where he leads a Music Centre that provides teaching and a range of other musical opportunities for students and the local community.
His brief biography is as follows but for a more extensive one
click here.
Michael Downes read English and Music at King's College, Cambridge and completed a doctorate on the music of Debussy at the University of Sussex. He studied the cello with teachers including Ioan Davies and Timothy Mason and conducting with teachers including Lionel Friend and Colin Metters. He has worked as a conductor with numerous choral, operatic, orchestral and contemporary music groups in Sussex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and London. Before moving to St Andrews as Director of the University Music Centre in autumn 2008, he was music director both at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and of the London-based City Chorus.
Alongside his work as a conductor, Michael is active as a writer and lecturer on music. He has lectured on music and opera for the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, Glyndebourne, the Deal Festival and Ireland's Wexford Festival. He is currently writing a book on the music of the contemporary composer Jonathan Harvey (1939--), to be published by Ashgate in 2009. He also regularly reviews music books for the Times Literary Supplement. (See for example an article on Janacek in the March 25, 2009 edition of the Times Literary Supplement.)