David Wilson-Johnson is a British operatic and concert baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

.

Career

David Wilson-Johnson studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

. As a singer he studied at the Royal Academy of Music

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he won the Dove Prize for most distinguished student.

In 1976, Wilson-Johnson made his operatic debut in Henze's We Come to the River

We Come to the River

We Come to the River is an opera by Hans Werner Henze to an English libretto by Edward Bond. Henze and Bond described this work as "Actions for music", rather than an opera. It was Henze's 7th opera, written originally for the Royal Opera in London, and takes as its focus the horrors of war...

at the Royal Opera House

Royal Opera House

The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...

 at Covent Garden, where he subsequently sang important roles in many operas. In 2006, he decided to retire from the opera. He is still involved in giving concerts worldwide with the major orchestras and recitals with his regular pianist David Owen Norris

David Owen Norris

-Life:Norris was born in 1953. He studied music at Keble College, Oxford where he was organ scholar; he is now an Honorary Fellow of the college. After leaving Oxford, he studied composition, and worked at the Royal Opera House as a repetiteur...

.

David Wilson-Johnson was Professor of Singing at the Conservatory of Amsterdam from 2005 to 2010, and is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

He has worked with prominent conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy

Vladimir Ashkenazy

Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy is a Russian-Icelandic conductor and pianist. Since 1972 he has been a citizen of Iceland, his wife Þórunn's country of birth. Since 1978, because of his many obligations in Europe, he and his family have resided in Meggen, near Lucerne in Switzerland...

, Frans Bruggen

Frans Brüggen

Frans Brüggen is a well-known Dutch conductor, recorder player and baroque flautist.-Biography:Brüggen studied recorder and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. He also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1955, at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal...

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Charles Dutoit

Charles Dutoit

Charles Édouard Dutoit, is a Swiss conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of French and Russian 20th century music...

, Carlo Maria Giulini

Carlo Maria Giulini

Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor.-Biography:Giulini was born in Barletta, Italy, to a father born in Lombardy and a mother born in Naples; but he was raised in Bolzano, which at the time of his birth was part of Austria...

, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...

, André Previn

André Previn

André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

, Sir Simon Rattle, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, and Evgeny Svetlanov

Evgeny Svetlanov

Yevgeny Fyodorovich Svetlanov was a Russian conductor, composer, and though less well-known, a pianist.Svetlanov was born in Moscow and studied conducting at the Moscow Conservatory. From 1955 he conducted at the Bolshoi Theatre, being appointed principal conductor there in 1962...

.

David Wilson-Johnson is one of the most sought after baritones in the world today.

He is known affectionately as "Jumbo Johnson" due to his larger frame.

Proms

After the 9/11 attacks of 2001 he sang Beethoven's Ninth Symphony under Leonard Slatkin

Leonard Slatkin

Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor and composer.-Early life and education:Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father Felix Slatkin was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet,...

 at the 2001 Last Night of the Proms to a worldwide audience of 340 million.

External links

• David Wilson-Johnson - official web site