Musical Director
Andrew Jones (conductor and founder of CHOG) is a University Senior Lecturer in Music at Cambridge, and Fellow, Director of Music, and Director of Studies in Music at Selwyn College. After studying violin, organ, and composition at the Royal College of Music, he read Music as an Organ Scholar at St Peter's College, Oxford. Before defecting to the East, he held a Junior Lectureship in Music at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was a Senior Scholar of St Peter's College, and the first Burton Senior Scholar of Oriel College. His main research interests are in music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially that of Carissimi and Handel, and in performance practice. He is currently (and for the foreseeable future) working on a critical edition of all of Handel's solo cantatas for the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe; some of these editions were performed for the first time at the CHOG concert on 8 May 2004; more will be heard at our concert on 6 May 2006. In 2004 he was awarded one of the University's Pilkington Prizes for Teaching in recognition of his achievement in convincing undergraduates that fugue is fun. The editions and translations that he has prepared for CHOG have been used by other opera companies worldwide, both in live performances and in recordings. Later this year his edition and translation of Alcina will be performed by English Touring Opera. His critical edition of Rodelinda, published by the HHA, has been performed at major opera houses throughout the world, including Glyndebourne (conducted by William Christie and others), Munich (Ivor Bolton), Göttingen (Nicholas McGegan), and the New York Met (Harry Bicket), and it will be used for productions in San Francisco, Toronto, Dallas, and Halle. For the Cambridge Handel Opera Group, which he founded in 1985, he has edited, translated, and conducted eleven operas by Handel.