David Matthias Lloyd-Jones is a British conductor who has specialised in British and Russian music. He is also an editor and translator, especially of Russian operas.
Lloyd-Jones began his career in 1959 as a répétiteur at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He made his professional conducting debut in 1961 with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted the New Opera Company from 1961 to 1964. He continued to build his reputation as a freelance conductor for orchestral and choral concerts. He also conducted for BBC broadcasts and TV studio opera productions. In 1972 he was appointed Assistant Music Director at Sadlers Wells Opera, where he conducted a wide repertory which included the first British staging of War and Peace by Sergei Prokofiev.
Lloyd-Jones founded and became the first Music Director of Opera North in 1978, forming its orchestra, the English Northern Philharmonia, of which he became Artistic Director. Over the course of twelve seasons, he conducted over fifty productions in Leeds and other Northern England venues. Highlights of his career at Opera North included the first British performance of Krenek's Jonny spielt auf and the British stage première of Richard Strauss's Daphne. Other notable Opera North productions which he conducted included Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet, Borodin's Prince Igor, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Berlioz's Les Troyens, Richard Jones's staging of The Love for Three Oranges, a double-bill coupling of Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and The Nutcracker – the latter choreographed by Matthew Bourne of Adventures in Motion Pictures – and the world première of Wilfred Josephs's Rebecca. He also conducted orchestral concerts for Opera North, including at festivals in France and Germany. He stepped down from the position of Music Director in 1990.
Other engagements and activities
Lloyd-Jones has conducted at the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera and at the Wexford, Cheltenham, Edinburgh and Leeds Festivals. He was Music Director of the Bradford Festival Choral Society. He has also appeared in major cities throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Israel, Japan, Australia and the Americas. In the recording studio, Lloyd-Jones has specialised in British and Russian music, often for Hyperion and Naxos. His recordings have included the first commercial recording of Constant Lambert's Summer's Last Will and Testament, released in 1992 and Tiresias, in 1999. As an editor, he has tackled projects including the 1984, Ernst Eulenburg miniature full score—in its critical edition—of Gilbert and Sullivan'sThe Gondoliers. In June 2009, Lloyd-Jones conducted a professional recording of Arthur Sullivan's grand opera Ivanhoe for Chandos, which was released in 2010 and was nominated for a Grammy Award.
