Meet our conductors
Thomas Payne - Musical Director

https://thomaspayneconductor.co.uk
​
British conductor Thomas Payne is a Jette Parker Young Artist at the Royal Opera House, working on the music staff for both ballet and opera productions at Covent Garden and abroad. This season he will also be making debuts with London City Orchestra, Scottish Ballet and Northern Ballet.
In the 2019/20 Season he returns to Covent Garden to cover Manon, Enigma Variations, Concerto, Raymonda, The Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia and Swan Lake for The Royal Ballet and conducted the premiere of Leon Haxby’s Snow White for contemporary arts group Collective 31.
For the Royal Opera he will serve as off stage conductor for Otello, alongside Antonio Pappano and in May he will conduct the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No.1.
In summer 2019 he was Assistant Conductor at Grange Park Opera for their revival of Don Carlo and from 2016-17 was Chorus Master for Longborough Festival Opera for their productions of Fidelio, Tristan and Isolde and The Flying Dutchman to critical acclaim. Payne was also Assistant Conductor for British Youth Opera, conducting Southbank Sinfonia in English Eccentrics. In contemporary opera, he has given premieres of James Oldham's Bastien and Bastienne, Off the Beaten Track as well as Ulf Diether Soyka's Ninya and Edward Lambert's The Cloak and Dagger Affair for Tête à Tête.
Payne studied violin at Birmingham Conservatoire and conducting independently with Philip Ellis, Steuart Bedford and Sian Edwards.