Neil Thomson

London-born NEIL THOMSON (1966) studied violin and viola at the Royal Academy of Music (1984-87) and conducting with Norman Del Mar at the Royal College of Music (1987-89). He participated in masterclasses in conducting at Tanglewood Summer School in 1989 where his teachers included Gustav Meier, Seiji Ozawa, Kurt Sanderling and Leonard Bernstein. In his professional career he has led dozens of orchestras: London Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Bonn Classical Philharmonic Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Osaka Century Orchestra, Kansai Philharmonic, Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, Kyushu Symphony Orchestra, Romanian National Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Ulster Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and Welsh National Opera, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Gothenburg Opera, St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, Orchestras of São Paulo and Buenos Aires, National Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, Sicily Bari Symphony Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, etc. Prominent soloists have played under his baton, including Sir James Galway, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Dame Moura Lympany, Sir Thomas Allen, Dame Felicity Lott, Philip Langridge, Sarah Chang, Antonio Meneses, Nelson Freire, Steven Isserlis, Julian Lloyd Webber, David Geringas, Natalie Clein, Gyorgy Pauk, Brett Dean, Jean-Philippe Collard, Stephen Hough, Peter Jablonski, Jean-Louis Steuerman, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett. His concerts with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (2017-19) have been highly praised. In December 2018 the orchestra performed the South American premiere of Messiaen's "Des Canyons aux Étoiles". Thomson also works on film projects. In 2013, he premiered the reconstructed score of Singin' in the Rain at the Royal Albert Hall in London, he recorded the music for Psycho, Vertigo, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Fantasia, Amadeus and Titanic. He recently conducted the show Gene Kelly: A Life in Music with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He records mainly for the Naxos company. He made a disc of American contemporary violin concertos with Itai Shapira and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, two discs of orchestral music by José Siqueira, Edino Krieger and César Guerra-Peixe with the Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra. He is undertaking a project to record Claudio Santoro's 14 Symphonies again for Naxos, romantic Brazilian music with the English Chamber Orchestra, Nigel Clarke’s The Prophecies of Merlin with ORF Vienna. Since March 2014, he has led the Philharmonic Orchestra of Goiás, Brazil. In February 2024 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Toyama International Contemporary Music Festival and the Sinfonia Toyama. The Goiás Philharmonic has been awarded the Order of Rio Branco (the Brazilian equivalent of the Legion d'Honneur) by the Minister of Foreign Affairs in recognition of its immense contribution to Brazilian music. As a lecturer at the Royal College of Music, he was the youngest Head of the Department of Conducting (1992 to 2006) in its history and was made an Honorary Fellow of the College for services and high reputation as a teacher. He has been a frequent Guest Professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Krakow Academy of Music, the Conservatoire "Arrigo Boito" in Parma, the Lithuanian Academy of Music, the Campos do Jordão Festival and the London Conducting Workshop. In 2002 he was invited by Lorin Maazel to be on the jury for the European rounds of the Maazel Conducting Competition and in 2007 was on the jury, alongside Gunther Schuller, of the Eduardo Mata International Conducting Competition in Mexico City.