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Conductor

  Tony Halstead's work as a Conductor and Director in the period-instrument movement increasingly takes him to those orchestras whose players, using conventional instruments, wish to develop an awareness of authentic performance style in the baroque, classical and romantic eras. He has had a long association with The Hanover Band and has conducted several leading European 'H.I.P.P.' modern-instrument orchestras in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

 In the United Kingdom, Tony has also conducted the English Chamber Orchestra, London Primavera Orchestra, London Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, English Haydn Festival Orchestra, Highland Chamber Orchestra and Festival Chamber Orchestra, Kent.

 He has enjoyed working with several high-quality UK amateur orchestras and in this field has conducted several that include: the Wolsey Orchestra, Ipswich; the East Anglia Chamber Orchestra and the Cambridge Sinfonia.  Outside the UK he has conducted various excellent semi-professional community orchestras in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Further commitments outside the UK include return visits to many European orchestras, as well as making guest appearances worldwide for concerts or recordings.   

 Tony conducted the World Premieres of Roxanna Panufnik’s ‘Letters from Burma’ for solo oboe and string orchestra,  Timothy Jackson's 'Spiegelstück' for 4 horns and orchestra, and  Richard Bissill's 'The Magnificent Seventh'.

 In the recording studio, Tony has conducted or directed over 50 CD recordings. These include 8 of Boccherini's cello concertos with Tim Hugh and the SCO;  several symphonies of JM Kraus with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment;  violin, flute and oboe concertos by JH Roman, also with the OAE; Bach's Six Brandenburg Concertos, various concertos by Vivaldi, and the complete orchestral works of Johann Christian Bach, all with The Hanover Band, and JH Roman’s ‘Drottningholm Music’ with the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra.

His CD recording of baroque and classical trumpet concertos, which include the well-known Haydn concerto, with the legendary Crispian Steele-Perkins and the English Chamber Orchestra, was recently featured on BBC Radio 3's 'Record Review'.  Their recording of the Haydn trumpet concerto was selected as the 'Library Choice' out of a detailed survey of dozens of recorded performances.

 Very recently Tony conducted the Primavera Chamber Orchestra in a CD recording, released in July 2019, of several works by the composer/clarinetist Helen Habershon.